


Oceans Brawl

by emdash90



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/F, Idiots to Idiots, Post-Season 2, Slow Burn, Where in the world is Villanelle Astankova, morons on the run, so many feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-08-10 04:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emdash90/pseuds/emdash90
Summary: When time slinked forward, glacially, endlessly, and Eve had run out of ways to keep herself distracted, her attention diverted, her thoughts desperately anchored to anyone, anything else — there she was.Waiting to bulldoze through the delicate balance of sanity she had managed to piece together, grain by grain, since Villanelle had set her world alight with a douse of gasoline and a match tossed carelessly over her shoulder.orThrown in opposite directions in the aftermath of Rome, Eve and Villanelle find their own ways to cope with the fallout. But with the Twelve knocking on both of their doors, it's only a matter of time until these two are reunited — whether they like it or not.





	1. Malade

**Author's Note:**

> It has been a long, loooooooooong time since I sat down to write any kind of fanfiction. Like, 19-years-old-and-writing-South-of-Nowhere-fanfics long. So, a literal decade.
> 
> Jesus, I'm old. 
> 
> Be gentle with me?
> 
> Hope you like it.

And when there was nothing and no one left to keep Eve’s focus, to hold her weathered gaze, Villanelle was always there to seize hold of her thoughts.

When the world whirled on as she stared into nothing from counters in café windows. 

When a flash of honey blonde hair sent her head spinning in its direction as it dissolved into waves of bodies moving this way and that.

When time slinked forward, glacially, _endlessly,_ and Eve had run out of ways to keep herself distracted, her attention diverted, her thoughts desperately anchored to anyone, anything else — there _she _was.

Waiting to rush through the riverbed of her droughted mind.

Waiting to fill every crack, smooth every surface with a single, ravenous sweep of water over dry land.

Waiting to bulldoze through the delicate balance of sanity she had managed to piece together, grain by grain, since Villanelle had set her world alight with a douse of gasoline and a match tossed carelessly over her shoulder.

Waiting, because it was never long before Eve was inviting her in again, locking her up behind the shutters of her thoughts for her own private show, because what was temptation if it was only ever resisted?

Did it wash away? Did it cease to exist?

Would she? Would Eve let her?

And even after all she had seen, all she had done — in Berlin, in Paris, in London, in Rome — she knew those questions were no closer to earning a positive response than they had been before. Before Villanelle marked her, branded her as her own.

_You’re mine _— etched red and hot and burning— into the skin of her abdomen for none but Eve to see until the day Villanelle would return to claim what she had dubbed as hers.

If ever.

Weeks dragged on without word, without apology, without mirth, or mockery.

No _sorry baby _slipped into lavish gift boxes as a token of dark affection. No cutesy murders calling her name, teasing her, tempting her out of the dreary mediocrity that was Before and After Villanelle.

“Asshole,” Eve scoffed, not for the first time, into a sweating gin and tonic before stealing a long swallow of clear, cold liquid, half-melted ice cubes falling with a _ clink _against her upper lip as she drained the heavy-bottomed glass.

“Sorry?” the bartender’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“Not you. Sorry,” she mumbled, offering a weak smile. 

The pub, save for Eve and her doting bartender, was empty. The light in the room was all but nonexistent, even at that early hour, with all of its heavy wood surfaces and dark wallpaper. Still, Eve’s focus was drawn to his fists that clutched the foil-wrapped necks of expensive champagne as he restocked his bar ahead of the late-afternoon rush. 

She drifted to sticky-sweet bubbles and shattered green glass painted across annoyingly perfect herringbone floors, and swallowed the familiar wave of nausea as she tested the strength of the crystal caught between clenching fingers.

And without missing a beat, she was there once again. 

Zeroed in on broken bottles on Parisian hardwood. 

On bruised, bloody, beautiful faces. 

On exhaustion and exhilaration and shy fingers and brushed cheeks. 

On sighs and moans breathed into ears, on hotel hallways, on gunshots, on steel meeting skin, trailing, piercing, hacking…

“Another gin and tonic, madam?” 

And this time, she was grateful for the interruption, for the anchor that shook her free of her downward spiral, that tethered her to the present tense and filled her lungs with the oxygen she hadn’t noticed she was missing.

“Make that two,” a familiar curtness confirmed from beside her, and Eve could barely fight back the exasperated sigh she heaved into the ceiling as her head fell back between tense, tired shoulders.

“Seriously?” Her head lolled to the right, eyebrow arched in annoyed disbelief. 

“Hello, Eve.” Carolyn’s nod was aloofly polite as she slid onto the leather-cushioned barstool next to her former colleague. Eve bet the woman could give the Queen a lesson in cool diplomacy. “I trust you’re recovering well?”

Carolyn remained unaffected as she took in Eve’s drooped demeanor, wild curls tamed in a loose, messy ponytail, deep wrinkles in her cream, cuffed-and-collared sweater that had been the only damn thing left in her closet.

_ Is that a sweater attached to a shirt? _

She exhaled again, willing away thoughts of sparkling eyes and the mocking smirk she wished she could see one last time, if only to wipe it off. Whether with a slap or with her lips, she still wasn’t sure.

“How did you even find me here?” 

It was petulant. Sneering. Angry. Resigned.

Because she was.

“Eve,” Carolyn cocked her head, reaching across the bar for her freshly poured cocktail without breaking eye contact, “did you truly believe that MI6 doesn’t bother keeping an eye on its assets, active or otherwise?” she questioned over the rim of her drink before tilting the glass toward her lips for a small, pursed sip.

Of course, she knew that she was being watched, monitored, surveilled, protected — whatever they wanted to call it — since her bleeding, emptying body had been recovered from crumbling Roman ruins.

A mercy, despite Carolyn’s promise that Eve would be left to her own devices if she refused the woman’s offer. 

Still, she hadn’t expected Carolyn to sidle up beside her the very first time she stepped a tentative foot outside the boundaries of her neighbourhood since British Intelligence dropped her on her own doorstep weeks ago. 

Eve remained silent, blinking, waiting for her former employer to get on with whatever it was that she had schlepped clear across London to get out of her. 

“Right. I’ll just dive straight into it, then, shall I?” 

Carolyn directed an impatient eyebrow at the barkeep, who quickly took the hint and scurried into the storeroom to quietly take inventory and mind his own business. 

Satisfied, Carolyn took a final sip of her gin and tonic before setting it onto the glossy, varnished wood of the bar. 

“I’m here to ask for your help tracking down Villanelle.” 

She watched for Eve’s reaction at the mention of the name. In the (albeit, rather few) scenarios she had imagined, she never expected to see the woman snort as she shook head in response to Carolyn’s seemingly absurd question.

“Why does MI6 need to track her down? She’s not working for The Twelve anymore. I doubt she’s a threat to national security.” 

Carolyn, for her part, remained cool, eyebrow arched, hands coming together to rest in the lap of flawlessly pressed black slacks. She was composed as ever, and Eve wished she could find the slightest wrinkle, the smallest speck of lint just to be able to have something to lord over her.

Mentally, of course.

“You might remember me saying something with regards to eyes and assets, and, impulsive and unpredictable as she has proven to be, Villanelle is still very much an asset.”

“And if she is, then so am I, is that right?” Eve snorted a second time, wanting nothing and everything to do with whatever Carolyn was asking of her.

“Yes, well,” the Englishwoman began, sighing in near-defeat, “as much as we’ve tried our best to soldier on with other alternatives, it would seem that you have a rather unique set of skills when it comes to tracking and understanding international female assassins.”

“She’s gone, Carolyn.” 

It wasn’t petulant. It wasn’t angry. 

But it was undoubtedly resigned.

She’d waited. 

For what, she wasn’t all that sure. 

But if she knew Villanelle, she knew that it had been too long, too quiet, to think that she would be coming back for Eve. 

To taunt her, to torture her, to put an _end, _one way or another, to the chasing, the power struggle, because, despite her best efforts, Eve certainly hadn’t walked out of those ruins with the upper hand.

She hated her for it. 

It burned in her stomach something fierce, something far beyond the reach of the tender, healing gunshot wound in her abdomen. 

Of course, Villanelle could point her gun, pull the trigger and walk away like it was nothing. 

_ Do you think I would kill you, Eve? _

_ Yes. _

And some days, most days, she wished she had.

Because there was nothing left in London without her. Without Niko, without Kenny, without Bill.

Because she couldn’t look at her hands, look in the mirror, look at anything without being paralyzed by what she had done. 

She could still hear Raymond’s pained screams, the thud of his axe as it connected with skin. 

She could still feel the burning stench of sweat in her nostrils.

She could still see the proud, feral, aroused look in Villanelle’s eyes as Eve hacked away at the man who dared to lay a hand on her.

All of her strength lived and died in that moment and the ones that followed — and now she didn’t know who she was, or where to go, or what to do.

_Asshole._

This time, she kept her curses to herself, soothing her aggravation with the cool burn of juniper and quinine.

At least she’d be keeping malaria at bay.

“Eve?” 

She had been too preoccupied with Rome and Raymond and Villanelle and malaria to register whatever Carolyn had said.

“Sorry,” she offered, half-meaning it.

“Any ideas, Eve? Any feelings?” 

Carolyn had asked her this once before, lifetimes ago. Eve had rolled her eyes then, and she was rolling her eyes, now.

As if she had some kind of Villanelle sixth sense — like her goddamn _spidey senses _tingled anytime she was near.

Well.

Beside the point.

“She’s gone,” Eve reiterated. “Radio silent. I really don’t think she wants to be found.”

“Not even by you?”

“She shot me! I’m pretty sure that means she closed the door on whatever this —” Eve waved a hand vaguely — “was.”

“Perhaps a bit extreme for a lovers’ quarrel, yes, but it does happen on occasion,” Carolyn dismissed with a shrug and a toss of the hand.

Eve breathed deep, placing her palms flat on the bar in front of her, fingers spread, trying, but failing to keep her anger from shaking her entire body. 

“Carolyn, I’m being as polite as I possibly can be when I ask you to please fuck _ off _.”

A beat. A cool, ever-collected smile.

“Right.” Carolyn slipped off of her stool, gathering her long, blue trench coat from the bar. She stood before Eve, arms crossed and hands hidden beneath the expensive wool, head tilted to the side as she considered her next words carefully. 

“It is exceedingly rare for someone to be sacked not once, not twice, but _three _times by a single organization in less than a year’s time. It’s even more remarkable for that individual to be offered a _fourth _chance by that same organization despite their irresponsibility and sheer inability to follow directions. Yet — here we are.” 

Her tone was even, pleasant, firm. As if it would ever be anything else. 

“Villanelle has made some very powerful enemies after butchering the Twelve’s hound in Rome —” Eve’s stomach dropped — ”and I hear they are rather eager to return the favour.” 

Carolyn made a move to leave, stopping just short of Eve, staring over the still-seated woman’s shoulder as she spoke into her ear. “If you have any interest at all in keeping Villanelle alive, then I suggest you be the one to find her before The Twelve, if they haven’t already done.”

Eve swallowed.

Carolyn was already striding past her, headed toward the exit when Eve stopped her cold in her tracks.

“I killed Raymond,” she blurted, heart thundering in her ears. Her hands gripped the sides of her stool, knuckles white, shoulders hunched forward. 

She had never uttered those words aloud. 

There hadn’t been anyone around to hear them, anyhow. 

Carolyn turned slowly, eyes shining with something Eve couldn’t quite place. 

Surprise? Pride? Approval? Distaste? The woman’s emotions were always projected through calculated filters of aloofness and indifference.

“Interesting,” Carolyn smiled serenely, giving nothing away. “Though I would recommend keeping that _ fascinating _bit of information to yourself.”

The short-haired woman stepped toward her once again, placing a hand on Eve’s tense shoulder. 

“Do consider my offer, Eve. I daresay you’ll know where to find me if you change your mind.”

After a light pat to the arm, Carolyn spun on her heel, exiting the ill-lit pub without another word.

**//**

Hours later, when she returned to an empty house after trudging through cold rain, her clothing soaked through to freezing, goosebumped skin, Eve collapsed, shivering and sopping, into a dining chair. 

She took in her kitchen, her living room, her house that mimicked a home. 

She scoffed at shelves half-filled with books, at the light patch of hardwood that had been protected by Niko’s favorite armchair for so many years. 

The kitchen was near barren, its old contents having found a new life with her ex-husband, wherever he called home these days.

He’d left behind the sofa, the television. The piles and piles of criminal psychology textbooks. 

With a sigh, Eve rose to fetch a glass and a bottle when her eyes spied a piece of cardstock in the middle of the kitchen table Niko had so graciously left behind.

Shaking, she reached for the seemingly innocent, yet ever so threatening postcard of an iconic London clocktower before turning it over with trembling fingers.

Her stomach sank, lept, lurched at the sight of the red gel ink scrawled over the back of the unstamped mail.

_ Sorry I missed you! _

_ Let’s get together soon! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read! Your thoughts/comments would be much appreciated :)


	2. Diagnosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter murder baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some technical difficulties meant this chapter took way, wayyy longer than I wanted, mais bon. I'll try my best to get updates up on a weekly basis from here out.
> 
> Thank you to all of those who read, gave kudos, and left a little love. You have no idea what your support means :) 
> 
> Hope you like this one. Let's meet Villanelle. (Disclaimer: she's a wee bit angry)

With her hands deep in the pockets of black plissé crop pants, their whimsical, lettuce-edge hem turned upward like a smile she couldn’t trouble herself to feign, Villanelle stood stories above the world, unseen by the traffic below from the 12th floor of a nondescript, high-rise edifice bordering the 13th and 14th _arrondissements._

Her shoulders were square as she looked down, sour, at the cobbled streets of the city she once called home — the one that had so rudely carried on without her as though she’d never graced it with her immaculately dressed presence. 

She hadn’t returned to Paris since fleeing — mildly septic and far from glamorous — in exhilarated agony with nothing but a stab wound, a mission, and an ill-packed briefcase. 

If she squinted, she thought, she bet she could spot the shuttered, ten-foot windows of the top-floor flat she had to fight herself to keep away from since arriving in Paris the day before. But squinting gave you wrinkles, and on top of the string of injustices she’d had to wade through since Eve fucking Polastri came cantering into her life on her high horse, crow’s feet would just be adding insult to Villanelle’s very injured ego. 

When a familiar heat spread like warm morphine through her veins and to the heart, she inhaled deeply, letting the anger wash over her with a roll of the neck and flex of the fingers. 

She hated what she had become. 

She hated that she had allowed herself to devolve into such a pathetic mess of a human. 

Hated submitting to wild-haired women and their tragic — if not annoyingly adorable — wardrobes, who stomped all over her expensive feelings like some many-legged insect scurrying across the kitchen floor. 

All for a woman who had looked at her with such incredulity when Villanelle carved out her heart and offered it to her on a shining silver platter. As if _I love you_was the most fucking ridiculous thing she had ever heard. 

_ You don’t understand what that is. _

She had let some made-for-tv movie fantasy turn her into a sad, heartsick animal rolling onto her back and begging for a bone that would never be thrown. 

And — why the hell not? 

Hadn’t she proven herself? Hadn’t she given Eve everything she asked for while only ever getting scraps of convenient pity and denied reciprocation tossed at her feet in return? 

“How could she not love me? I’m so much fun.” 

Met with silence, Villanelle spun, annoyed, away from her pouting reflection, waving a previously-pocketed handgun in the clammy, horror-stricken face of her host. 

_"Hello?_ Jerome? I’m talking to you. Don’t you think I’m fun?” 

Her former psychiatrist whimpered in response, his upper body convulsing in terror, fighting against the nylon cable ties that bound him to his ostentatious high-backed chair. 

For security’s sake, Jerome had changed locales since her last visit with Konstantin a lifetime ago. Back when she was still the Twelve’s most prized asset and Eve Polastri was but a stranger with amazing hair — not yet the near-fatal distraction she would soon become. 

The doctor had been easy enough to restrain — though, firing a 9 mm bullet through his calf certainly helped to slow him down. 

She had come with a job to do, and recalling her time in Bulgaria less than fondly, Villanelle took the measures necessary to prevent a repeat of phone meeting face once the frantic flinging of the contents of his desk began. 

The bullet had, unfortunately, done little to stop the man’s pitiful sobbing. 

And, oh, did she hate it when they cried. 

She yanked the saliva-sodden gag from Jerome’s mouth with a roll of her eyes before collapsing into the cliché leather chaise, cradling the gun to her chest as she had done so many weeks before. 

“I just don’t know who I am anymore.” 

And though Villanelle’s sigh was exaggerated, her words were far closer to fact than they were to fiction. Somewhere between Paris and London and Amsterdam and Rome, she had started leaking gallon after gallon of the woman she had spent three years carefully, meticulously curating until she could barely recognize herself. 

But she was taking back control. 

Showing Eve was the first step. Everyone else would soon follow. 

“I can help you.” Jerome was begging, his voice desperate and cracked, intentions no doubt fueled by the tortuous pangs of his shattered tibia and the blood that seeped into the dark, high pile of his carpet. “Please — I’ll give you everything you want!” 

_ Will you give me everything I want? _

_ Yes. _

“Will you?” Villanelle sat up, and her eyebrows came together in a patronizing furrow. She leaned toward her hostage, considering him with gleeful amusement. Like she hadn’t heard thatone before. "Are you even really a doctor? Or did you get this job by blowing smoke up the Twelve’s arse?” 

“Please,” he choked, his mouth thick with tears and mucus and saliva. “Please, I can help you. I can help.” 

“Aw,” she cooed with a condescending tilt of the head, her dark blonde ponytail falling behind her left shoulder, lips drawn in a falsely apologetic smile. “Too bad you stopped being useful about five minutes ago.” 

Villanelle raised her arm, gun aimed between the man’s imploring eyes, and squeezed the trigger before he could manage a final, gurgled plea. 

Unblinking and unmoving, she reveled in the renewed silence, staring blankly, for just a moment, beyond the splattered remains of Dr. Jerome — _ something. _She had already forgotten his last name, despite how frustratingly difficult it had been to track down a Jerome in Paris without a family name. 

Not that it was important, anyway. She hadn’t come for him. 

With an unperturbed sigh, she rose from her seat and collected a thin stack of manila folders before slipping anonymously into the cacophonous bustle of the afternoon commute in the streets below. 

**//**

_...lack of empathy and remorse. Patient is prone to erratic and impulsive behaviour with no regard for her own safety or the safety of others. Easily bored — resorts to violence and manipulation for self-amusement. _

_ Dx: psychopath (PCL-R 38/40) _

Villanelle scoffed, a flurry of flaky pastry blowing gracelessly past her lips as she ascended the opulent spiral staircase of Paris’ L’Hotel. 

Mildly indignant as she flipped through the contents of one of the files she had swiped from the vault Jerome had so graciously granted her access to, she was placated only by the fact that she had achieved a near-perfect score on this PCL-R nonsense. 

She always had been an exceptional test-taker. 

Of course, there was nothing _fun _in her psychiatric evaluation. Of course, boring Jerome had failed to list all of her best qualities. Like her unique sense of humor. Her sensational sense of style. Her affinity for B-rated movies. Her athletic abilities. Her knack for languages and her Rolodex of English accents. 

_ I know you are an extraordinary person._

Of course, he’d get hung up on the same, stupid things everyone else did. 

_ I know you’re a psychopath. _

And though she wore her quirks and kills like badges of honour, Villanelle found little glory in the word that was so often launched at her in attack. Used as a limp explanation for her every move, as though she had no thoughts or desires or motivations of her own. As if she was merely the marionette to some dissociated puppeteer that bent her to their every will. 

It was limiting. Confining. Imprisoning. 

It drew an iron box around her name, and Villanelle wanted nothing to do with boxes. She was so much more than they could hold. 

She stepped into the pink and plum-curtained paradise that she had been calling home for the last 24 hours, manila folders tucked under her arm, and shoved the final, buttery bite of her_ croissant aux __amandes _into an already full mouth, ready for the evening she had been dreaming of since getting reacquainted with her old shrink. 

She was going to pour herself a glass of obscenely expensive champagne, order a banquet’s worth of room service, and slip into a hot bubble bath to wash off the tedium that was the afternoon’s activities before she settled into work. 

Naturally, those carefully laid plans were gunned out of the air when she stopped cold in the middle of the room. Her eyes fell to the dark, burly figure sitting patiently on a plush slipper chair in the golden, early evening light of the sitting area. 

Villanelle groaned, stomping a combat-footed boot on the pink-striped carpet. “Seriously?” she whined, not bothering to swallow before she spoke. Did he get some kind of push notification every time she misbehaved?

“Villanelle.” Konstantin, ever-dressed in his signature peacoat as though a lifetime in Russia had cursed him with the eternal need to stay warm regardless of where the world took him, smiled warmly. He folded the day’s issue of _Le Monde _and laid it to rest on his knee with his hands crossed atop it. “Please, come sit down.” 

Glaring, she dropped the files held between the tweed of her blazer onto the chic suite’s mahogany writing desk with a petulant _thack_. Her feet dragged across the carpeted floor before she slumped onto the velvet cushion of the offered chair, crossing her ankles over the chess table that sat between her and her old handler. 

“How did you even find me here?” 

“I am very intuitive.” Konstantin’s dark eyes shined, his tender smile still intact. “I also have some very good friends that saw you come in and out of this hotel. It’s a very nice place,” he nodded in appreciation as he took in the room’s luxurious textiles and ornate fixtures. 

“It’s better than that shithole in Paddington.” Villanelle shivered, remembering the scratchy, stain-covered linens and the ever-present smell of wet leaves and sour cheese. She did, however, retain a certain fondness for the vodka-breathed concierge and the gasping, electric moments spent gazing through the peephole on the latter side of a walnut door. 

“Ha.” The white-haired Russian smirked, his diaphragm visibly contracting with his mirthless laugh before his expression turned surly and reprimanding. “You are not being careful.” 

Villanelle made a show of rolling her eyes, dismissing him with a _psh _and ignoring his thick, pointing index finger with a wave of her hand. “I am always careful.” 

“You’re lucky it was me that found you and not them.” 

“How do I know you are not one of ‘them’ again?” Villanelle challenged, snickering. She leaned back comfortably in her chair, fingers brushing away the remnants of her afternoon snack from her black plissé blouse. She wouldn’t let an oil stain ruin her Givenchy ensemble. 

Konstantin was silent as he considered his charge for a moment, lips drawn in his usual jovial secrecy. He glanced around once more, noting the aftermath of Hurricane Villanelle that was shopping bags and designer clothing strewn across almost every conceivable surface of the elegant hotel suite. 

“Where is Eve? I thought she was supposed to be travelling with you.” 

Villanelle’s insides turned to ice. All traces of her earlier jest gone with the instant flick of a switch, she returned Konstantin’s smug, knowing grin with a cold scowl. 

“She had a really shitty stomach ache and couldn’t make the trip.” 

His earnest, hearty chuckle filled the room and the blonde fought the urge to give him a taste of her Dr. Martens with a swift kick to his chortling mouth. 

He was lucky she liked him. 

“Why are you_ here _?” She was exasperated, now. Annoyed. 

With a momentary memory lapse, she wondered how, with all his barging in and pompous omniscience, she had not yet been tempted put a bullet through his pestiferous smirk. Then she remembered Moscow and Konstantin’s pleading indifference and Eve Polastri and her stupid doe eyes, begging – in a crowded, cowering café – for Villanelle to come with her. 

_ Just you and me. _

What choice did she have? 

But she wouldn’t apologize. She was doing her job. 

“Carolyn has asked me to bring you back to London,” Konstantin explained, elbows on knees, pulling her away from ringing gunshots and panicked screams. “She wants to give you your old job back.” 

Villanelle threw her head back with a groan, her body half-hanging off her seat as a display of how bored she was with Konstantin and his useless MI6 news broadcast. 

“So she can keep pimping me out to creepy internet moguls who want to watch me floss? No thank you.” 

She rose from the chair, shedding her tweed jacket and tossing it carelessly onto the king-size mattress with her back to the man who watched her silently, carefully. She could feel his stare through the back of her skull, but she paid him no mind, striding over to the writing desk to flip through another one of the knicked reports to show him this conversation was over. 

_ Codename: Valentina _

What a stupid fucking name. 

Villanelle’s eyes scanned the file for any valuable information, but of course, Jerome, unfailingly inept, provided little intelligence on Valentina other than her ‘unforgiving promiscuity and indifference to violence.’ 

Did he seriously never have anything better to remark? 

She was mentally noting a name – Krassimir – that appeared in several instances throughout Valentina’s file when she felt Konstantin’s heavy presence beside her. 

“Villanelle.” 

She turned, clapping the cream-coloured folder shut with feigned surprise. “You’re still here?” she gasped with a hand over her heart. 

He loomed over her with his usual, slouching disapproval, tapping his newspaper impatiently against the dark fabric of his pants with his best attempt at looking intimidating. 

It was cute when he tried. 

“Enough playing, now. There's work waiting for you.” 

“I am not going back to London.” Villanelle rejected firmly, eyes wide, both eyebrows raised without a trace of apology. She was_ not_. Konstantin could beg all he wanted. 

He opened his mouth to speak again, but she was quick to shut him down. “We are done here, Konstantin. Go back to kissing MI6 ass.” 

And though his eyes narrowed in displeasure, he raised his hands in defeat. He was not about to drag her, kicking and screaming, like some tantrum-throwing teen. She would learn soon enough. 

“Think about it,” he advised with another pointed finger before turning toward the door to take his leave. “You’re not going to get a better offer.” 

**//**

Three days later, after embarking on yet another wild goose chase for a lead with no last name, Villanelle was triumphant as she knelt above her target, her right knee pressing into his trachea as he struggled to breathe, grubby hands clawing at her arms. 

In typical Twelve handler fashion, Krassimir Bakalov fancied him a long, brooding coat and a lowball glass or two of chilled, neat vodka after a long day of assassin wrangling. 

Also in typical Twelve handler fashion, he was ill-prepared when he returned home to find her sitting casually, ankle across knee, on the putrid orange sofa of his Brussels abode. 

He tried to run, of course, but this one had neither a log to hit her with nor a jetty to make his 007 escape dreams come true. 

“Where is she?” 

Villanelle dug her knee into the man’s throat as he fought against her, gurgling Russian curse words that were less than gentlemanly. He managed a desperate swipe at her face, his blunt fingernails digging painfully into the corner of her eye. 

She growled, agitated, reaching for the thick crystal tumbler he had dropped on the carpet in his foiled plans of running like the coward he was and repaid him in kind by smashing the glass over his cheek. 

Villanelle took advantage of his momentary distraction and pressed the threat of the largest shard of crystal she could find against the stubbled skin that protected his carotid artery. 

“Who is her next target?” 

She offered him punch to the side of his head with her left hand for good measure when he responded with a callous grin. 

“Run fast, Oksana,” he cautioned in mocking condescension, reminding her of a certain squat, pink gentleman. She couldn’t wait to wipe the smug smile off his ugly mug. 

“Who is it?” she demanded with another strike to the face. 

Krassimir let out a wet, sadistic laugh, blood splattering from shining red teeth before croaking what would be his final words. 

“Eve Polastri.” 

Her blood ran cold. 

She guessed she was going back to London. 


	3. Valentine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, I've spent the last two weeks recovering from a hellish tonsillectomy, which means this chapter is coming much later than I wanted. It definitely won't be as long of a wait for the next one. 
> 
> Thanks for all of your kudos, your subscriptions, and your kind words!

The postcard had seen considerable wear in the 24 hours that followed Eve's discovery.

Not that she noticed — she had been too busy staring off into the front hallway on high alert to register anything else.

Not the fraying of a once paper-sharp corner. Not the glossy photo separating from its cardstock back. Not the rawness of her forefinger, red and calloused from the incessant flicking.

_Sorry I missed you!_

_Let's get together soon!_

The initial wave of nauseating excitement had since worn off, replaced with an anxious foreboding that clung to her skin like a cold sweat.

Why now?

Five weeks crawled by since Villanelle had left her bleeding into the dust of Hadrian's Villa. Days of searing pain, dulled only by the ignorant bliss of morphine-induced fog. Hours of fury, of agonizing emptiness, screamed into tear-soaked pillows.

And all of that time, she had been left alone with a grating silence that gnawed at her flesh like invisible ants. Every damn second of every passing day.

So Eve asked herself again — _why now?_

Annoyed, frustrated, and unquestionably sleep-deprived, she sighed, reaching for the postcard for the umpteenth time with an angry swipe.

She examined the unspectacular stock photo of London's most iconic landmark, eyes narrowed, as if it would suddenly reveal a hidden meaning. A clue. _Anything_.

But Big Ben wasn't giving much of anything away, other than, if she was honest, a lack of creativity.

A nagging knot in Eve's stomach told her that there was something off, something not _right _about the entire situation because it all seemed so... unlike Villanelle.

The woman she knew — the one she prided herself on understanding better than anyone — would have done something different. Ominous. Cheeky.

She would have used fewer exclamation marks, to start. Perhaps a different message altogether. She would have left a postcard of the London Eye with the words _I see you!_ written in perfect, looping penmanship.

_Wait_.

Eve turned the card over in her hands and reread the hastily scrawled message that had been taunting her for hours. The hidden meaning she was searching for had been camouflaged in plain sight all along.

With a start, she was on her feet, flinching at the pull in her still-tender wound, and bounding, as fast as her recovering body would allow, up the stairs and into her bedroom.

Within seconds, Eve was kneeling at her bed and pulling out a familiar carry-on with shaky, labored breaths, anxious for what would come next.

The act of opening the baggage was at it had always been — slow, almost ritualistic. She savored the zipper's unhurried separation as the pull slid around the curves of the suitcase like the gentle caress of a lover — lost, for just a second, in a moment untainted by betrayals and gunshot wounds.

Everything was as it had been the last time she'd opened her lost-and-found luggage. Its contents were still neatly folded and gift-wrapped in tissue and ribbon, never having found the time or the heart to unpack the suitcase in full.

What she was waiting for, saving it for, she didn't know.

Eve disregarded the tremor in her fingers as they came upon the unforgettable black perfume box. She found the small slip of paper the box was home to, bringing the oft-thought-of note level with the postcard.

The knot in her stomach churned.

Villanelle's handwriting was just as flawless and intentional as she had remembered, but the two writing samples were most certainly not a match.

And before she could think, before she could panic, before she could wonder what the hell was going on and who the hell, if not Villanelle, had broken into her home to threaten her via postcard —

The doorbell rang.

Eyebrows knotted in confusion, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table, her pulse beating out of her chest.

Eve swallowed thickly.

_18:38_.

She supposed she was about to find out.

**//**

On a roster that included Crocs, fast fashion, and insufferable, beady-eyed, weasels of a man, flying coach was yet another item to add to the list of Things that Made Villanelle's Skin Crawl.

If it were up to her, she would have opted to travel by train.

She loved everything about them, from the dining cars, to the conductors' outfits, to the meditation of getting lost in the engine's rhythmic hum as she moved through a kaleidoscope of landscapes.

But Eve's house was anything but centrally located, and Villanelle couldn't risk adding to her travel time by making the hour-long schlep from St. Pancras to Ealing. It was already late enough as it was, and city traffic was the perpetual thorn in the sides of commuting assassins everywhere.

Villanelle scoffed, glowering out the tiny airplane window and onto the slate gray tarmac of Brussels Airport.

_Of course_, she was stuck on some shit flight, back to shit London, to keep Eve from doing something absurd like getting herself killed by some shit assassin with a _ridiculous_ name.

Villanelle made a face at nothing in particular, choosing to ignore the familiar, belly-deep laugh that mocked her petulance from a small corner of her mind.

_I think Eve Polastri made you go a little soft._

And though Konstantin's words were miles away from the truth, that did not mean that Villanelle was about to let Valentina and her "unforgiving promiscuity" anywhere _near_ Eve.

It was insulting enough to have been cast aside and replaced by an incompetent nobody. She was not about to let the Twelve ridicule her by dangling Eve on a string — even if that meant diving headfirst into whatever trap they thought they were laying for her.

Villanelle clenched her fists, reveling in the whisper of pain from the fingernails that dug into the skin of her palms in an attempt to quell the anger that bubbled hot and thick in her chest. She drowned the near-breathless rush of her elevated heart rate with the orchestra of banging luggage in the overhead compartments as other passengers found their seats in the cabin ahead of takeoff.

She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, as she clung to the ledge of determination.

She was going to focus on the job ahead and nothing else. She was not going to let Eve Polastri and this London stopover derail everything she had been working toward in the last five weeks.

In and out. Nice and neat. Back on track.

A body barrelled into the row next to Villanelle, their large frame squishing her to the edge of her seat, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs.

The culprit, a heavy, middle-aged man with an unfortunate hairline, offered a sheepish grin as he settled into his assigned seat. Villanelle returned his smile with tight lips, wondering if she could sneak through the hour-long flight next to a man with a biro jammed into his windpipe without raising suspicion.

Probably not.

A light whine died in her throat as she leaned her head against the window in uncomfortable misery. With a pout, she cursed everyone from her Hagrid-sized neighbor, to Eve, to whatever sadistic, elbow-room hating arsehole was responsible for the design of economy class cabins.

When the aircraft finally began to slowly taxi onto the runway for departure, Villanelle set the dainty hands of her gold Omega watch to London time.

_16:44._

She had better not regret doing this.

**//**

The doorbell chimed a second time as Eve padded down the staircase toward the front door, the loud pulse of her heartbeat amplified by the thud of socked-feet against carpet-covered hardwood.

While Eve's mind was already feet in front of her, racing to yank open the door to reveal the shadowed caller, her body told another story. She exercised caution as she inched toward the wooden shield that stood between her and probable impending ruin, the postcard crumpled between a sweaty grip.

Through the thick, etched glass of the windows, she could make out a tall, slim, indubitably female figure illuminated by the yellow glow of the porch lights.

Her brain was hurdling at top speed, her attention pulled every which way, frantic as she worked through every conceivable scenario from best to worst case.

It could have been Villanelle.

Psychotic history and healing gunshot wounds aside, Villanelle would have been the lesser of any other evil that could be lying in wait on the other side of the door.

It could have been the Twelve.

Had they finally decided that she knew too much, that it was time to put an end to her relentless digging?

It could have been some poor, canvasing university student subjected to the secondhand embarrassment of greeting a crazed, disheveled, 40-something woman clutching an unstamped postcard and demanding answers they couldn't provide.

No. Opening the door to Villanelle — whichever iteration of her — would be the best-case scenario.

"Just a minute," she called, cursing herself at the telling crack in her voice.

Eve took a steadying breath and slipped the creased postcard into her pocket before wiping the fear from her palms and onto the soft cotton of her joggers. Then, with false bravado, she wrenched the door open before reason could outweigh idiotic impulse.

Not that she had many options, anyhow.

"Hello, Mrs. Polastri?"

"I —" Eve's brows furrowed in bewilderment, in relief, in disappointment, before panic settled into her chest once again — "yes?"

The woman, who was neither Villanelle nor a door-to-door donation seeker, smiled at Eve. She introduced herself as Claudia Lorenza with an enunciated Italian accent far from the smooth fullness of the Russian one she had been hoping to hear.

She explained that she was an agent from AISE — Italian Intelligence — with a flash of a badge, Eve's eyes narrowing at the credentials that were held just far enough away.

She blinked, taking in the stranger whose auburn hair fell past her shoulders in voluptuous waves. Immaculately dressed in a classic Burberry trench, a white blouse, and navy paper bag pants, the agent's bright eyes and plump cheeks hinted that she was not a minute over the age of 25.

"We are investigating a series of incidents that occurred under our jurisdiction several weeks ago," Claudia continued, oblivious to the accelerating heart that hammered in Eve's chest. "I was told you might have information on a Russian assassin who was last seen in Roma."

Eve's stomach lurched at the words _Russian assassin_, but she refused to let her eyes and mouth betray her.

"I'm sorry," she offered, trying her best to manage a polite smile through quivering lips, "I wouldn't know anything about that."

And the record — the official one — would show that she did not.

Eve Polastri's passport had not been scanned since her frenzied return from Paris. Her travels in and out of Italy had been under an alias that should have perhaps made her wary of her situation at the time.

Her attempt to close the door was interrupted by a hand of painted red fingernails before it shut in the Italian woman's face.

"Please," Claudia's smile was sheepish in an effort to downplay the thinly veiled threat of the fingers that flexed against the painted wood, of a black and gold loafer sliding into the doorframe to hold it ajar. The expression seemed out of place on the woman's face — almost as though a mouth had been copied and pasted from someone else and onto Claudia's young face."I have not been with AISE for very long. This is my first chance to make a good _impressione_. Anything you know would be very helpful."

Eve weighed her very limited options.

She could slam the door and make a hobbled run for it. Though, that had been an ill-conceived plan the first time around when a certain ponytailed blonde chased her up the stairs and into the bathroom with nowhere to go.

She could let the woman in, she could stall for as long as possible to work out who this Claudia Lorenza really was, and maybe — _maybe_ — level the playing field.

She snorted internally, resigned to her fate, and moved out of the way to open the door to the younger woman, second-guessing her decision all the while.

Claudia grinned.

"_Grazie_, Mrs. Polastri."

**//**

Twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and fifty-six feet above the world, Villanelle was shifting in her seat, tapping the hard plastic tray with the knuckle of her middle finger as she ground her teeth impatiently.

They had been in the air for 48 minutes, and the terror of a child behind her had been kicking the back of her seat for the better part of the flight.

If this was her prize for being a nice person, they could keep it. She was struggling to see the point.

"Pardon me, madam," a graying, pursed-lipped flight attendant caught her attention with a condescending wave of the hand. "We would kindly ask you to please stop fidgeting with your tray. We've had several complaints from other passengers."

The woman gave her a pointed look as Villanelle's ceaseless knocking slowed.

"So sorry," she apologized in a flawless scouse accent without missing a beat. "I'm a bit of a nervous flyer!" Her timid giggle made the sale, prompting the older woman to nod in understanding.

"Not to worry, dear," the flight attendant assured with a warm grin. "Do let us know if there's anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable."

Villanelle put on a saccharine smile as the woman in uniform continued down the aisle, the assassin's upper lip curling, her eyes narrowing in a glare the moment the airline employee had turned her back to her.

Facing forward once again, Villanelle grumbled. The seat-kicking heathen in J-17 had resumed their work.

_17:33._

She really needed to kill someone.

**//**

"Would you like some tea?"

"That would be lovely, yes. Thank you."

As Eve's hands set about busying herself with filling the kettle, with pulling the cannister of tea bags from the cupboard overhead, her mind was racing, taking inventory of the resources within arm's reach. The ones stashed between books on the shelf to her right. In the mail holder on the wall to her left. Beneath a cushion on the sofa behind her.

Opening the drawer to grab the spoons, she recalled standing, trembling, in the very same spot so many weeks ago, as her deplorable attempt to hide a knife down the front of her pants got her nowhere fast.

She hoped she could do better than that this time around.

Eve cleared her throat, pushing the drawer shut and turning to Claudia with an awkward smile.

"Do you take milk or sugar?" she asked as she set a steaming mug in front of the agent who sat, still wrapped in her outerwear, at the kitchen table. Eve had asked to take her coat, but the woman declined her offer, keeping her hands deep in her pockets before settling into a dining chair.

"This is perfect, thank you." Claudia donned a grateful grin, and Eve thought, for the second time in their very brief encounter, how every one of the woman’s expressions seemed lacking. Empty.

She checked off a mental box before taking a seat at the table.

The woman was still, making no move to reach for her beverage as Eve watched her over the brim of her mug. Instead, she unfolded her hands and pulled a piece of paper from the folder next to her.

"Can you identify the woman in this picture, Mrs. Polastri?"

The agent slid a photo across the table toward Eve, who took the eight by ten print in her hands.

She smirked despite herself.

The mugshot with the bandana — Villanelle would be _outraged_.

"Mrs. Polastri?" Eve looked up to find agent Lorenza watching her closely, expectantly. "Can you tell me who this is?"

_You know who it is_, Eve thought. But she played along anyway.

"Yes," she replied, gently placing the photo back on the table. "Oksana Astankova."

Claudia nodded her thanks and continued with her interrogation. "And when was the last time you saw Ms. Astankova?"

Eve's ears perked a the question, noting the way the woman seemed to stumble over Villanelle's family name, with a hard B in place of the soft V in _Astankova_. If she blinked, Eve would have missed the way Claudia appeared to curse herself with a barely perceptible roll of the neck.

But Eve's eyes remained open.

"Oh, it's been a few months, at least," was Eve's deceptive reply as she gauged her guest's reaction. How much did she know? "Not since Moscow. I guess that was two months ago, maybe three?"

"I see," Claudia considered her response, frowning, giving nothing away. "You have not had any communication with her since then?"

"Not since I watched her shoot and kill a member of Russian Intelligence."

"That is quite a long time," Claudia commented with a pout, an offer of faux sympathy poorly masking her cold condescension. Eve bit the inside of her cheek, swallowing the heat that rose in her esophagus. The woman seemed to have minimal regard for blowing her own cover. "So you did not know about Oksana's contracts in Rome five weeks ago?"

"No."

A pause.

"What about —" the impersonating AISE officer flipped through the pages of Villanelle's file before bringing her eyes to meet Eve's — "Paris, three days ago?"

Eve's strained smile faltered.

Was it a bluff?

Had Villanelle truly put an end to flying under the radar? Had Eve been so isolated by her own psyche that she missed something in her daily scans of every major news outlet in Europe?

This time, she responded truthfully. "No."

Claudia gave a cheerful hum, returning to perusing the contents of the folder.

"Can you tell me about the nature of your relationship with Ms. Astankova?" Claudia's stare was cool, her voice serene and smug.

Eve gripped the seat of her chair, digging short nails into varnished wood.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand the question," she responded, just as crisp. She challenged the young woman with a raised eyebrow and arms crossed over her chest in defiance.

Claudia's eyes glimmered with something Eve couldn't quite place. Triumph? Mirth?

Danger aside, she was quickly regretting her decision to let this smirking rookie into her home.

"What kind of relationship do you have with Oksana? Tell me," Claudia sat back in her chair, limbs crossed, mirroring Eve's insolent stance, "are you colleagues? Friends?" Her smile widened. "Lovers?"

Eve's hold tightened around the edge of her seat, knuckles white, willing her heart to slow its ferocious thud against her ribcage.

"I was MI6. She's an active assassin that I was investigating," Eve seethed through clenched teeth. "_What else_ are you implying was going on?"

Claudia, for her part, remained unaffected by Eve's rapidly waning self-control.

She leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees, to look up at Eve through batted lashes. "So, your husband did not leave you because of your sexual relationship with Villanelle?"

A short, disbelieving laugh erupted from Eve's mouth at the teasing innocence of Claudia's question.

"Okay, no." Eve jerked to her feet, her chair falling back onto the floor with an angry clatter. She paid no mind to the shooting pain that tore through her gut upon her swift movement. She was _sick_ of people assuming they understood anything about her relationship with Villanelle.

"Why are you here?" she demanded against her better judgment, towering, with indignant courage, over the seated redhead.

The woman's face brightened. "You know why I'm here," Claudia chuckled. "We have been watching you."

And there it was.

The Twelve's hired gun rose from her seat, and with a pensive once over, she moved to step closer to Eve, pausing when her eyes landed at the older woman's feet.

Claudia bent to retrieve the postcard that had fallen from Eve's pocket, turning it over thoughtfully in her hands. She hummed again, smirking at the crumpled photo and its accompanying message.

"Is this from her?"

Eve stared, eyebrows drawn together, failing to understand what was unfolding before her.

"I —" she began, faltering as she searched the other woman's face, desperate for answers, "— this is from _you_."

It had to be.

Because if it wasn't from Villanelle, and it wasn't from the Twelve, then —

Eve swallowed the sour lump that formed in her throat. She was much farther from the truth than she thought she'd been.

She didn't know what was going on anymore.

Claudia's Chesire grin was genuine this time, broadening as she took a step closer to Eve, whose instincts had her stumbling backward as a result.

"Why would I send a postcard?" the assassin asked with a confused shake of the head. She continued to saunter toward Eve, self-satisfied smirk in place, until Eve's back connected with the bookshelf at the far end of the kitchen, the note now discarded silently somewhere onto the tiled floor.

Eve's hand slid along one of the lower shelves as Claudia came within a foot of where Eve stood, the wood of the shelf pressing into her shoulder blades. She was frozen, rooted to the spot as she stared up into mocking blue eyes. Not that she could move, anyway. The woman had her cornered, her only defense inches out of her grasp.

"You know," Claudia purred, her accent curling around her words, a single, perfectly manicured fingernail trailing down Eve's side. "The only reason we've been keeping an eye on you is to see if she would show up."

Eve winced at the unsubtle press to her wound.

"But," Claudia continued with artificial sympathy, "it's been forever, hasn't it?" The redhead's eyes widened, moving down to watch the slow stroke of her forefinger with a lick of her lips.

"Do you think she'll miss you?" she carried on, bringing her taunting regard back to Eve's.

The former MI6 agent's hand clenched at her side, the other still reaching, still searching.

Claudia leaned in, the cloying smell of bubblegum invading Eve's breathing space as she and the younger woman came nose to nose. "Or do you think she's already forgotten about you?"

Eve's fists tightened, seething fury replacing shell-shocked panic.

"Fuck you," she spat, the fingers of her right hand finally wrapping around the handle she'd been trying to find.

She slashed the knife at her aggressor, who intercepted her wrist before the blade could connect with skin.

So, hand-to-hand combat still wasn't exactly her thing.

Claudia's eyes flashed with sick glee as a giggle bubbled from her throat.

"Wrong answer."

The weapon fell to the floor as the back of Eve's hand connected with the solid wood of the bookshelf, and she howled when a thumb drove searing, hot pain into the scar tissue of her stomach.

A hand of pointed fingernails wrapped around her throat with an iron grip and Eve gasped for breath, pawing at Claudia's shoulders as she struggled against the deceptively strong woman.

The room was swimming before her eyes when a second voice cut through the sound of her own ragged breathing.

"Get your hands _off_ her."

And before Claudia could spin, thunderstruck and steaming, to come face to face with whoever was interrupting her playtime, the redhead was collapsing to her knees with a blood-curdling scream. A warm, red spray showered Eve's face as the younger woman toppled into her.

Eve stood gaping, bile rising in her throat once again, as her gaze traveled to the writhing, shrieking agent to the newcomer standing before her. The blonde's rage was emanating from her lithe figure in shockwaves as she panted, eyes locked on the bleeding-but-still-breathing woman sprawled across the kitchen floor.

Eve choked out a disbelieving gurgle, still desperate for air, drawing hazel eyes to hers for the first time in 37 days.

A familiar, maddening smirk graced Villanelle's features as she stood in the middle of Eve's home with an ax — _an ax_ — slung casually over her shoulders.

She exhaled.

"Hello, Eve."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come chat with me on twitter @emdash_90


	4. Benevolence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting these two in the same room together. I'm still hyperventilating a little.
> 
> Thank you all for your kudos and comments! I LOVED reading your reactions to the last chapter. They seriously make my day.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this one just as much.

It happened in slow motion.

Paralyzed, Eve watched, unblinking and hypnotized, as Villanelle raised the blood-stained ax above her shoulder, her forearms flexed beneath the rolled-up sleeves of her oversized jacket.

The weapon swung with violent grace for its ultimate act, and Eve was captivated by the amber fury that boiled in Villanelle's hazel-green eyes as the blade connected with a target below her line of sight.

But she didn't need to see the gore of Claudia's mangled body — the way it gave one final jerk as Villanelle yanked the ax from her remains — to feel it — to hear it. 

Half-collapsed against the bookshelf she was cornered against, a shrill buzz ringing in her ears as if a bomb had detonated within an inch of her face, Eve's legs struggled to keep her upright. The edges of her vision blurred with black and her heart banged in terror, deafening, like the crack of a shotgun. Still, her eyes stayed glued to Villanelle as the younger woman's heavy breathing slowed, her body motionless as she stared down at her victim in triumph.

It was when Villanelle tossed the ax to her feet, expelling a breath from puffed cheeks, that Eve's nausea came barrelling in.

She catapulted to the kitchen sink upon the familiar drop in her stomach, clutching the sides of the countertop. Her muscles were flexed in painful preparation before her body lurched with a dry heave. An icy chill ravaged her bones, rattling her like the lone, brittle leaf still clinging to a bare branch at the end of autumn.

Eve brought her hands to her face, elbows resting against the stainless steel of the sink's edge. Taking a few steadying breaths, she willed the strength back into her shaky legs and hammering heart.

Eve didn't know what to do, where to look. She didn't know if she should run as far as her already-burning limbs would take her, away from whatever insanity had been unfolding in her home over the last 22 minutes.

Had it only been that long since her reeling postcard discovery was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell?

"Eve?"

Villanelle's voice cut through the panic, through her racing mind, drawing her back to the present.

She spun to face Villanelle, who stood on the latter side of the kitchen island, hair tied back in a high ponytail and dressed in a cherry red bomber and skinny wool trousers, ready for the runway rather than murder in Ealing.

Not that  _ that's  _ what was surprising. 

Still dizzy with her thoughts, Eve gawked at the other woman, whose blank face and set jaw lacked the usual mirth she saved for Eve and Eve alone.

Moments passed as the two women remained unspeaking, unmoving on their respective sides of the makeshift divider, trapped in each other's gaze.

Villanelle was the first to break the silence.

"Are you okay?" she asked with a quietness to her voice that Eve had never heard from her.

Eve softened — for just an instant — before reality came crashing back, dismantling her daze just as fast.

Her eyes skipped from Villanelle and the question in her stare, to the corpse lying in a thick, ruby pool on her kitchen floor, to the vacant spaces of her half-empty home, the telltale sign of a life split, very recently, straight down the middle.

Her laugh was hollow, at first.

She looked back at Villanelle, who had yet to blink or move an inch. 

Was she even breathing?

Eve laughed again — disbelieving, this time.

And then she laughed again.

She laughed again, and again, and again.

Her body clenched as delirium rocked her frame, and the tears that refused to fall from her eyes clogged her throat, restricting her breathing.

"Am I okay?" she choked. Her head spun with visions of Bill, of Aaron, of Raymond, of blood, of Villanelle laughing, teasing, seething. “Am I okay?”

Eve hunched forward, gasping, grasping the edge of the island that separated them. She glanced up in time to see the assassin take a tentative step forward, her hand raised, reaching toward Eve.

"Don't you dare. Don't you  _ fucking dare _ ," Eve cried, the threat in her voice slashing at the woman in defense.

And though Villanelle's eyebrows rose in mild surprise, she took another cautious step in Eve's direction.

"Eve, come on," she attempted to reason. "You're being hysterical. You need to calm down.”

But that wasn't about to diffuse the situation.

"Oh, do I?" Eve screamed, livid. "Am I?" 

She grabbed whatever object was closest to her — a spatula — and whipped it at Villanelle, grazing her shoulder.

Villanelle halted, stoic as she considered the devolving woman before her.

A pepper mill was the next thing to hit her square in the stomach.

"Is that better?" Eve shouted as her hand closed around the handle of the marble rolling pin Niko had left behind. 

"Okay," Villanelle concluded, seizing the older woman's wrists, snatching the baking instrument and placing it on the island before Eve could do any real damage. 

Taking advantage of her proximity, Eve tore herself from the woman's loose grasp. Her fists banged against Villanelle's shoulders, palms slapped at her chest. 

Though Eve’s fitful rage was far from over, Villanelle had seen enough.

Catching Eve's wrists once again before she could continue her attack, Villanelle pushed Eve backward, pinning the woman against the kitchen counter. With her arms raised, the backs of her hands against the cupboard, the assassin's body pressed into Eve's, holding the woman in place with a knee over her thigh.

Eve struggled against her, but was nowhere near a match for the younger woman's strength. She fought, squirming and yelling until the exhaustion — from her antics, from the last 24 hours, the last five weeks — set in. Her muscles went slack, her shrieks quieted, but Villanelle’s hold did not waiver. 

An eternity passed with their torsos flush together, eyes locked, ragged breath mingled, one exhaling as the other inhaled. 

Sure that Eve would not resume her onslaught the second she let her guard down, Villanelle took a step back, leaving a foot of space between them as their bodies detached from the other.

Eve rubbed a hand over her elbow, still panting, ignoring the hum that crawled over her skin.

"Why are you here?" she croaked, her voice raspy, her throat raw and aching.

Villanelle eyed her for a long while, quiet, unreadable, with her hands hidden in her front pockets.

"I am going to finish this," she said, nodding her head toward the crime scene behind them as she took another step back to increase the distance between them, "and you are going to finish calming down."

Eve's grumbled response was less than keen. She needed answers — she didn't need coddling. But Villanelle was firm.

"Go upstairs, Eve." Her rebuttal was cold, shutting down Eve's protests. "I don't need an audience."

"Like hell, you don't." Though her body had refused to continue cooperating, Eve's anger persevered. 

Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, pulling her away from the counter and forcing her toward the staircase. 

"I don't want you down here." 

Villanelle lowered her head, eyes glacial as she stared into Eve’s to make her message loud and clear. And then the assassin was turning away, pulling open drawers and cabinets in search of whatever it was she needed to “finish” what she had started. 

When she caught sight of Eve in her peripheral vision, rooted to where she had left her at the foot of the stairs, Villanelle clicked her tongue.

"Go," she commanded once more without a glance her way.

A moment passed before Eve grudgingly conceded. She was too tired to keep up the fight. 

She turned to climb the stairs with a stomp of her feet, the heat that warmed her skin whenever Villanelle set her eyes on her notably absent during her ascent.

**//**

Villanelle collapsed, spent, into a cold, cushioned chair in Eve's backyard.

Her eyes roamed the dark, snow-sprinkled garden, enjoying the quiet and the burn of the brisk, evening wind on her fingertips.

Her body ached, her head was pounding, her stomach growling. She hadn't eaten anything since the tiny packet of three —  _ three  _ — pretzels the airline had generously offered their economy class passengers.

Cleanup had never been a part of her responsibilities. The Twelve had hired personnel to take care of the dirty work, whenever necessary. Not that Villanelle would ever partake in duties so far below her paygrade.

But it seemed wrong —  _ rude _ — to leave a literal bloody mess in the middle of Eve's kitchen, and even though the woman had hardly earned Villanelle's benevolence, she was never one to forget her manners.

She wondered if it had been a mistake to come.

Perhaps she should have just — 

She dismissed the thought before it could form.

She could have found Jerome sooner, found Krassimir sooner. Then she would have been able to shut Valentina down before she ever stepped a foot in Eve's postcode. Would have been able to enjoy herself and take her slow, sweet time to let the redhead suffer for even  _ thinking _ of laying a dirty finger on Eve.

Then Villanelle would have been able to carry merrily on with her life, without needing to walk back in on the woman who had walked away from her.

It certainly would have been easier on her mental health.

But that was just another thought she couldn’t fathom.

And she hated it.

Villanelle kicked a stone at her feet, cursing herself at her inability to shake herself away from Eve and the mess she created in her chest.

She contemplated leaving.

She did what she had come to do; there was no reason left to stick around.

She certainly didn't need the abuse.

More than three hours passed since Villanelle had stormed into Eve's kitchen to find her pressed against a bookshelf with Valentina's filthy paws all over her, and she could still feel the anger roiling in her stomach. The Twelve wouldn't be far behind now — not once they learned that they were down another handler  _ and  _ an assassin. Not once they figured out that their latest target had escaped, unscathed.

It wouldn't be long before they sent a new dog — perhaps one more competent than the novice that had been Valentina.

Eve wouldn't be safe. 

Not until every last branch had been cut down.

Villanelle sighed and rose from her chair, brushing the snow from her legs.

She tried to convince herself that she hadn’t made up her mind hours ago.

**//**

Eve sat, slouched over on her living room couch, hands wringing between her knees.

It had been two hours since she heard the slam of the front door, and just over three since she had been ordered upstairs like a child on a timeout.

As if  _ she  _ was the one who needed a freaking scolding.

After 90 minutes of silent stillness, Eve crept downstairs, inching her way into the kitchen though she knew the house was empty. She found the room spotless, with not a hair out of place save for the living room rug that seemed to have gone missing since Villanelle's departure.

It had taken ages for her heart rate to slow, her world still teetering from everything that had transpired in the last 27 hours.

Carolyn. 

The postcard. 

The assassin. 

The postcard. 

_ Villanelle. _

Eve hadn't been sure how she would react to seeing the woman again for the first time, and while she wasn't altogether shocked by her actions, she  _ was  _ taken aback by the reverberating clarity Villanelle had brought with her. It was as though Eve was finally hauled out of the bereft, grief-riddled fog she had been dwelling in for more than a month.

Alone in her home once again, Eve wondered if Villanelle's exit had been a permanent one — if she would return or if she would leave Eve to continue spiraling on her own. 

She loathed the fact that the woman's presence could cause such turmoil and blanket her in security all at once. That she couldn't help but want to throw herself and keep throwing herself into the whirlpool of conflicting emotions that was hating and —  _ not  _ hating Villanelle.

It made her head spin and her stomach turn more than any ax ever could.

Eve's musings were broken by the mercy of the back door clicking open, and within seconds, Villanelle was striding into the kitchen, never casting her eyes toward the dimly lit living room.

She'd somehow managed a wardrobe change sometime in the last three hours. She had left the bomber and black slacks behind in favor of tan riding trousers and a white grid turtleneck accented with a chunky, mildly ridiculous, gold necklace that fell to her navel. Her dark blonde hair was falling in the lightest of waves beyond her shoulders. Her boots had been very politely removed at the door.

Eve’s eyes followed Villanelle as the woman slipped out of her navy, knee-length coat and folded it onto the back of a dining chair before moving to the sink to wash her hands. She kept Eve ever so nonchalantly out of her line of sight, setting about rummaging through the fridge and cupboards, lighting the stove, filling pots.

Her focus remained on her work all the while, keeping her back to Eve, only turning to grab the odd utensil every now and then. And as the trained assassin moved about her kitchen with effortless elegance, Eve never looked away.

Fifteen minutes later, Villanelle was sashaying into the living room toward Eve and setting down a bowl of creamy pasta on the coffee table in front of her.

Spaghetti carbonara.

"You have nothing in your refrigerator," Villanelle complained, standing over her with a scowl.

"I haven't had much of an appetite."

Villanelle didn't respond. Instead, she dropped into the armchair across the room and dug into her own plate of food with zeal in lieu of dignifying Eve's bitterness with a response.

A moment passed before she looked up, mouth full, to notice that Eve had yet to touch her pasta.

"Eat." She pointed to the untouched bowl with her fork. "I am a very good cook."

Giving in to the angry rumble of her stomach for surviving on tea biscuits since returning from the pub the day before, Eve leaned forward to take a very small, very passive-aggressive bite of her food. She hated that it was the best thing she'd tasted in months.

She also deliberately disregarded Villanelle’s smirk as she went in for a second bite.

They ate in relative silence, the metal clink of cutlery against bone porcelain the only soundtrack to their low-lit meal. Eve was the only one to register the absurdity of the situation. 

Having devoured as much as she possibly could, the pasta sitting heavy in her stomach, Eve set her bowl back down onto the coffee table. She sat back against the pillowy recesses of the sofa, hands on her knees, fingers drumming anxiously over cotton joggers.

"Would you like some more?"

"Villanelle, what the  _ fuck _ ?" 

The blonde's eyebrows came together in false confusion. "Are you not hungry?" She gave the older woman a once over before squeezing in a gentle dig. "You should really eat more, Eve. You look terrible."

Eve snorted in derision and stood abruptly. Villanelle's aggravatingly calm and patient demeanor had returned as she watched Eve pace the length of the living room with the heel of her palm pressed to her forehead as if it held the entire weight of her body upright.

When the words came to her, she turned back to Villanelle and threw her arms skyward. "What are you even doing here?"

Still seated, Villanelle smiled lightly, gesturing to the kitchen, to the dishes in front of her. "We are having dinner."

Eve's head fell backward with a groan. 

" _ Here _ . What are you doing  _ here _ ?" she demanded, gesticulating widely. "What are you doing in London?" Her voice was rising. "What are you doing in my house? What were you doing in my kitchen with an  _ ax _ ?"

Villanelle offered her a cautious grin as she rose to her feet. "Helping you?" she answered with a question in her voice.

It wasn't the one Eve had been looking for. 

Granted, she didn't know what was.

"And what, I'm supposed to be  _ grateful _ that you waltzed in here after more than a month with an ax over your shoulder like some sexy firewoman to save me from redheaded assassins with terrible accents?" She was raving, she knew it — but she had been quiet for so long.

Villanelle brightened, seeming to ignore most of what had just exploded from Eve's mouth. 

"You think I'm sexy?"

An exasperated sigh.

"Villanelle." Eve was pleading, her eyes shining, anguished. "Why?"

The younger woman shrugged, looking past Eve and into the kitchen for a beat before returning her eyes to Eve's. Her voice was soft, a breath above a whisper.

"I wouldn't let anyone hurt you."

Eve wanted to laugh, wanted to cry. She wanted to drop dead onto the floor because Villanelle's answer was too much to bear.

"Like this, you mean?” 

The disdain in her voice was unmistakable as she lifted her baggy, college t-shirt to her rib cage, revealing the mark Villanelle had left her with, still red and blue and healing.

Villanelle's eyes zeroed in on Eve’s stomach, stupefied by the sight of her own handiwork. She took a quarter of a step back, regaining her footing from the unseen force that had very nearly bowled her over.

Licking her lips, she swallowed. Her arms were frozen at her sides, her right thumb squeezing the knuckle of her middle finger.

And then she blinked, wiping it away like a windshield wiper over misting rain — gone before you could notice it was there.

Villanelle sneered to recover from her lapse in sanity.

"I think about that all the time." Her response was solemn, mocking, calling back to the last time the two stood together in Eve's home.

At least Eve knew how this would go.

"Are you sorry?" she asked, already knowing the answer that would follow.

"No." Villanelle's sneer was still intact. "Are you?"

"No," Eve whispered, willing herself to mean it.

Villanelle stepped away, and Eve rejoiced as she released the breath she had held hostage in her lungs.

"Finish that." The blonde pointed to Eve's unfinished pasta, collecting her own empty bowl from the small, glass table. "I will pack a bag and then we'll go."

"Go?" Eve couldn't help the incredulous laugh that bubbled from her throat. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

Villanelle rolled her eyes, blocking the way as Eve attempted to move past her in a huff. 

"Eve, come on," Villanelle rationalized, thankful, at least, that she was not being assaulted by a deluge of kitchen utensils. "You know you can't stay here. It isn't safe."

Eve's arms crossed over her chest in defiance. "I don't need your help."

Villanelle's patronizing chuckle gnawed at her skin. She mirrored Eve's stance with a jeering pout. "Please." 

Eve kept her arms entwined, shielding herself as she alternated between glaring at Villanelle and the empty vase in the corner of the room.

"You can be mad at me somewhere else. Someplace safe."

But Villanelle's offer was declined.

"I don't need you to agree, Eve. You are very short and I am very strong," Villanelle boasted, playful smugness on full display. "I can carry you out of here over my shoulder if I need to. You know, since I'm such a sexy firewoman."

Like Eve would ever let that happen. It was time to start grasping at straws.

"I can go to MI6 for protection."

"MI6 doesn't care about you." Villanelle stepped closer once again, invading Eve's airspace for the third time in just a few hours. She refused to breathe her in this time, hating the way her head swam every time she did. "They stopped caring about you the second you stopped being useful to them."

"Oh, and I'm supposed to believe that you do?" 

Villanelle swung her arms in a half-shrug. 

"I am here."

Eve gaped, unable, unwilling to process Villanelle's words.

What choice did she have?

She barely had one five weeks ago, when she had bluffed, turning her back on Villanelle and earning a bullet through the gut as the reward for her overconfidence. 

She stood by her actions. Her betrayal. But when it was all said and done, she was right back at square one with Villanelle and her offer to keep Eve safe — even when she had done little to earn her protection in the weeks since they parted ways.

Taking Eve's silence as surrender, Villanelle nodded in victorious resolution.

"I'll go pack your bag."

"I can pack my own bag," Eve countered, petulant, clinging to the crumbs of her dignity.

Villanelle acquiesced. She didn’t need to give Eve an excuse to find the rolling pin she’d hidden at the back of the pantry.

"Don't take too long. They will not be far behind."

The assassin cleared Eve's path, who pushed past her with unnecessary force. Just because she had yielded didn't mean she had to do so with a smile.

She was halfway up the stairs when she heard Villanelle call her name.

Eve whirled to see the woman standing at the bottom of the stairs, her usual conceit replaced with hesitation. She pulled a folded, crumpled bit of paper from the pocket of her pants, grasping it tightly between two fists.

The postcard.

"Is this from her?" 

Eve swallowed a triumphant leer at the self-consciousness of Villanelle's question. She kept her response cool. 

"No." She knew exactly which buttons to press. "I thought it was from you."

Villanelle's teeth clamped together, the muscles in her jaw flexed in anger. The uncertainty in her face had vanished and her eyes flashed as the postcard crumpled in her grip.

Pursing her lips to hide her own self-satisfaction, Eve shrugged and pivoted, continuing her journey up the stairs with more pep in her step she’d been able to muster in a long time.

It was only once she was safe behind her bedroom door that she heard the cold smash of porcelain against kitchen tile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come chat with me on twitter @emdash_90


	5. Humanitarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are a lot of feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring an introspective, annoyed, mildly confused Villanelle. 
> 
> This first scene kept me up at night. Hope you like it!

Relaxed in the plaid-patterned wingback chair in the corner of their small, stone cottage’s modest great room, Villanelle stifled a yawn as she watched dawn break in shades of pink and orange over the hills of Northumberland.

Snow had fallen overnight, dusting the rolling landscape in a thin white sheet that would melt into the earth before the sun could finish its morning ascent. Barren branches swayed in the wind, and the assassin welcomed the chill that crept up her skin despite the heat of the woodstove.

Villanelle thrived in winter.

As a child, she relished the sharp whip of air against her face that brought tears to her eyes like nothing else could. She savored the agonizing burn of her extremities as she stood in the snow, ankle-deep and near frozen, for hours at a time, fueled by her insolence as her father’s bruising, backhanded threats of falling sick rang in her ears.

Villanelle rarely thought of Russia. She found little use in getting lost in the nostalgia of a life that was no longer hers, of the unhappy memories of a girl — of Oksana — she had killed long ago. 

It had been a shit life, anyway. 

But as much as she denied her own mortality, Villanelle remained woefully human. 

She couldn’t help the occasional thought that escaped the box she kept locked in an untouched chamber of her mind, no matter how hard she fought against them. And when that happened, she found solace in the cold — ruthless yet unwavering — because it was easier to recollect on the biting sting of frostbite than all those moments when she’d had the warmth yanked from under her feet.

Villanelle rolled her neck, enjoying the satisfying crack of her vertebrae as she worked the kinks out of her spine. 

She was exhausted. 

Dizzy with the sensation of blood rushing through her body, her every cell screaming for attention, she kneaded her forehead with her thumb, hoping to relieve the migraine that drummed against her temples.

She needed a nap and a bath and a smoothie, in whatever order they were available to her. The 17 minutes of sleep she had managed after their five and a half hour journey north were far from the rest and relaxation she needed.

The goal had been to put as much distance between them and the Twelve as possible, and Villanelle had managed that much, at least. They had raced through the countryside in a borrowed vehicle, testing the limits of the boxy Volkswagen Golf as she pushed 150 with Eve riding shotgun. 

It wasn’t the sexy getaway car Villanelle had once imagined in her plan to whisk Eve away to Alaska, but she couldn't complain. Time was running out before her former employers learned of her latest string of transgressions, and the Twelve would be less than thrilled with her when they did. 

She was still patching together pieces of a plan, but they would all hinge on Eve and her willingness to cooperate. 

Villanelle fought back a snort. 

If the woman’s frosty demeanor was anything to go by, Villanelle would have her work cut out for her. 

Granted, her own mood hadn’t been any better — not after the shit Eve had pulled on the staircase. 

As if Villanelle would ever get so lazy as to pull the same stunt twice. She was craftier than that. 

Eve should have known better. 

Didn’t she know better?

Villanelle urged herself to cling to the anger and treachery that boiled beneath her skin since she raised her gun in Rome, proof that she still held all the cards. Proof that she could snuff whatever fondness she felt for Eve with a flick of a switch — or the pull of a trigger — because Eve would only continue to break Villanelle’s trust and turn her self-righteous nose up at everything Villanelle had to offer. 

It was rude. 

Her eyes were drawn to the middle of the room, where a sighing, sleeping Eve was sprawled on the brown leather loveseat, frowning as she kicked a crocheted blanket to her feet.

Villanelle wondered what Eve was dreaming about. She wondered if Eve dreamt of her, or if she dreamt at all. She wondered how Eve had been sleeping in the weeks they had been apart, and if her nights had been as restless as Villanelle’s. Wondered if she’d stared at the ceiling, angry and miserable and wanting, as sleep evaded her just as it had Villanelle. 

Not that she cared. 

She just wondered.

Villanelle’s eyes remained locked onto Eve as the woman continued to stir. Her hair was spread over her pillow in a wild mess, her t-shirt riding up her stomach to reveal the smooth skin of her hip as she floated back to the waking world. 

Villanelle ran her tongue over her teeth with a long, heavy blink, annoyed by her own confliction. 

Anger was easier to maintain at a distance.

She could feel a tickle of warmth threatening the steel reinforcements she had spent weeks raising around her resolve. Still, she was not about to take a wrecking ball to all of her hard work just because Eve Polastri looked cute when she slept. 

Villanelle was simply doing Eve a favor; she was a humanitarian, after all. 

She hummed with a fond smile, remembering how loud Konstantin had guffawed, how close he had come to cardiac arrest the first time she cracked that joke.

From the couch, Eve cleared her throat, stretching her arms overhead as she blinked awake, and Villanelle cast a disinterested gaze to her phone, scrolling through nothing at all. She kept a covert eye on Eve as the woman sat up, glancing around the room, confused by her surroundings.

After what appeared to be  _ quite  _ the internal struggle, Eve had finally succumbed to sleep and drifted off with her head against the passenger’s seat window two hours into a very silent car ride.

Villanelle didn’t have the heart to wake her upon their arrival.

“How did I get in here?”

Villanelle’s lips twitched at the sound of Eve’s cracked, gravelly voice, still thick with sleep. It was the first time in their short reunion that her words were void of malice or resentment. 

It was nice. 

“See?” Villanelle smirked, placing her phone atop the arm of her chair in nonchalance. As if she hadn’t spent the last however long with her eyes glued to Eve. “I told you I could carry you over my shoulder.” Her grin widened. “It’s a shame you were asleep — it was very romantic.”

“Cute,” Eve deadpanned. 

Villanelle shifted in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs in an attempt to squash the taunting tenderness that bloomed in her stomach as she watched Eve stand from the loveseat with her fingers pushed through her morning curls.

She moved to the massive picture window that looked out onto snow-covered hills, her hands rubbing her arms as she took in the winter scene before her. 

Villanelle remained quiet all the while, waiting for Eve to break the silence that had so quickly fallen over them once again. 

The minutes ticked on before she spun around, stepping away from the window to look around the room, running a hand over tables and chairs and countertops as she collected her words. 

“So, where are we?” 

Eve leaned against the island that divided the ground floor between the kitchen and living spaces, her arms resting at her lower back behind her. Though she tried her best to appear casual and unaffected, her anxiousness was given away by her foot that tapped against her ankle and her fingers that clasped and unclasped her forearms. 

“Longframlington,” Villanelle enunciated, struggling to roll her tongue around the syllables of the village’s name. People complained that French was hard when it was really the English language that was the fucking nightmare.

Eve was gracious enough to conceal her laugh with a polite nod.

“Who does this house belong to? Are we squatting?” Eve’s gaze traveled around the humbly decorated room once again in search of clues on who lived there and when they might return.

“Squat is such an ugly word, Eve,” Villanelle tutted, looking skyward. She explained that the cottaged belonged to a lovely middle-aged woman — Sue — who had been nice enough to accommodate her very late, very last minute reservation.

“So you didn’t— ” Eve flailed with an awkward stabbing motion — “you know.”

Villanelle’s mouth dropped, affronted and amused. “Eve, I’m not a monster. Besides, I have a flawless Airbnb rating. You should read my reviews.”

Eve rolled her eyes, unimpressed, and hopped onto a stool that had been tucked under the lip of the island. 

It was easy to forget how little time they had spent together since they first came face to face in a bathroom mirror all those months before. It was easy to forget when they had spent so much of their time apart getting to know each other in different ways — intimate ways — watching and learning and understanding as no one else could.

Villanelle could see the questions forming in Eve’s mind, her eyes betraying the curiosity that was everything that made Eve Eve.

“Where have you been?” 

“What have you been doing?”

“How long have you been back in England?”

Villanelle kept her responses aloof, neither ready nor willing to be subjected to Eve’s wagging finger and pious disappointment — especially when Villanelle was still making things up as she went along. 

She knew Eve could see right through her veiled answers — the woman’s arched brow could certainly attest to that — but was relieved when Eve didn’t push the issue, at least for the time being. 

“How did you know?” 

Eve’s voice was soft as the fingers of her right hand played with those of her left, eyes searching Villanelle’s for truth. 

Though she knew the question was coming, she was no better prepared to respond — not without revealing what she had been getting up to since they parted ways in Rome.

“Are you working for the Twelve again? Is that how you knew?” 

Villanelle’s head snapped up, eyes narrowed at the absurdity of Eve’s follow-up question. She rose from her chair in one swift motion, gritting her teeth as pins and needles attacked her calves after remaining seated for far too long.

“Of course I’m not working for the Twelve, Eve.” She gesticulated between them. “You know, they are not exactly our biggest fans right now.”

“Then how did you know?” 

Villanelle kept her lips sealed, but Eve pressed on.

“I just want to know what’s going on.” 

She was leaning forward on her stool, elbows on knees, arms extended as though she was waiting for Villanelle to place the answers in her cupped hands.

She looked tired — resigned.

Beyond the dark circles, the sunken cheeks, the obvious weight loss that was barely concealed by baggy clothing, Eve walked and talked as if she carried a weight Villanelle could not see. The excited, knowing smugness that brought life to her dark eyes had been dulled by something Villanelle could not comprehend.

She didn’t like it. 

And she couldn’t understand why.

Villanelle could handle Eve’s anger, her shoutiness, her assault with deadly utensils — all of it. But this was something she didn’t know how to deal with.

“Why does it matter?” Villanelle’s arms swung at her sides, exasperated by Eve’s relentlessness. “You are safe. We are safe. Problem solved. Is that not enough?”

Eve tilted her head, considering Villanelle before she smiled through tight lips. 

“You don’t trust me.”

Villanelle shrugged and stepped past Eve. 

Her exhaustion was turning into nausea and she didn’t know how much longer she could stand there with Eve and her questions and her pleading eyes and sleep-mussed hair. 

So she retreated back into the cold, back where she was most comfortable.

“Maybe not,” was Villanelle’s simple response. “But it’s not like you have done very much to keep it.”

**//**

Five hundred-odd kilometers south of Longframlington, the snow was washed away by the frigid drops of rain that poured over the streets of London in an icy film.

A balding, dark-haired man escaped from the deluge as he entered the unremarkable front hall of the office space above a souvenir and money exchange shop in Bayswater. 

He would have rather been at home, enjoying a nice cup of tea and the Saturday paper instead of needing to voyage across the city in such dismal weather. 

He could have called, he supposed, but it was hard to know who was being watched, what had been bugged, what lines had been compromised. He figured he would save himself the additional beratement. 

He was no stranger to the treatment of messengers.

He shook the water from his umbrella and dropped it into the stand before traversing the worn, creaking hardwood floors to the unit’s only other room.

The man stopped in front of the closed, peeling white door, dreading the conversation ahead, but his heavy, booted footsteps had already given him away. 

“Come in, Crofton.” 

He braced himself before stepping into the sparsely decorated office. 

Thanks to Raymond’s death, his once simple job had suddenly become too much responsibility, and it was no secret that his promotion was due to an alarming decrease in personnel rather than actual merit. He would have been happy to keep things as they had been. 

But circumstances had changed.

The room was dimly lit, the fluorescent lighting overhead amplified by dingy walls and the dreary gray of the outside world.

“Have a seat,” his superior instructed him from their high-backed chair, pointing to the one that sat on the latter side of their large, wooden desk. 

Crofton promptly followed the given instructions and ran a hand through his damp, thinning hair. 

“Well?” 

Crofton cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Krassimir has been assassinated.” 

His statement was met with silence. 

“Erm — they found him in his home. In Brussels.” 

“Yes, alright, Krassimir is dead,” his liege waved an impatient hand. “What about Valentina?”

The man coughed again. He really was not cut out for this line of work.

“Yes, ah, Valentina.” He shifted once more. “Valentina has been MIA since last night.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” his host sighed in exasperation, pinching the bridge of their nose between their thumb and forefinger. “I don’t want to say she only had one job, but she truly had only  _ one job _ .” 

Crofton grimaced in apology but ultimately remained silent. It was probably for the best. 

Valentina, his first recruit, had been a trial gone terribly wrong, and it didn’t bode well for him that his unit couldn’t pull off a kidnapping of an unarmed civilian. 

“Do you have any good news for me today, Crofton, or have you only come to rain all over my weekend?”

“Well— ” he swallowed, desperate for his hypothesis to be true — “we believe that Villanelle and Polastri are together. It would explain Krassi’s death and Valentina’s disappearance. Polastri couldn't have handled her alone.”

“Eve is very resourceful under pressure,” Crofton’s superior murmured, tapping their index finger against their chin, staring past his shoulder in thought. He was mildly startled when his chief clapped their hands together in finality. “But let’s hope you’re right. Do you have any leads on their location?” 

“We’re working on it, ma’am.”

“Good.” The woman’s peered focus returned to her laptop, and Crofton nodded, rising from his seat, eager to take his leave.

“Crofton?” the woman’s deceptively pleasant voice spoke again just as his foot crossed the threshold out of her office. He turned to face her with tense shoulders. 

“Ma’am?”

“See that you find them quickly.” Her eyebrows were raised, her forehead creased, the lines in her face more pronounced than usual. “This only works if we have them both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your comments and kudos! 
> 
> Chat with me on Twitter @emdash_90


	6. Arsehole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to my best friend, who said "I really wanna read your Killing Eve fic but I don't want to develop a crush on you." Haha I think you're safe, babe.
> 
> tw: softness ahead

Eve didn't know what to expect when she decided to leave behind her skeleton of a life and escape the Twelve with Villanelle under the cover of night.

To be fair, there wasn’t a handbook on how to share close quarters with international assassins for extended periods of time, and even if there was, Eve was certain that no manual could have prepared her for what life on the run with Villanelle would look like if it tried.

If she squinted, Eve could make out some similarities to the delusionally romantic Alaskan getaway she was promised. The cottage, the snow, the moderate seclusion — but their circumstances were different. 

And though she would spend her life denying it up and down the continent, imagining an alternate reality — one where she said yes to Alaska, to Villanelle — was something she kept herself wrapped up in every day since she had walked away.

Villanelle didn’t need to know that.

No one else needed to know it, either.

But Eve knew it, lived it, and most days, had absolutely no idea what to do with the information.

Thirty-odd hours elapsed since she had awoken in the middle of a small yet remarkable cottage in a village she’d never heard of, and the pair of them were no closer to making peace than they had been mid-confrontation in Eve’s kitchen.

There were no delusions, no wistful exhilaration, and certainly no romance. 

Villanelle had made it a point to steer clear of Eve despite their confined space. Instead, she opted to spend the bulk of the day at the kitchen island, scowling at the screen of her laptop for hours at a time. 

Still, their long stretches of silence and terse interactions didn’t stop Villanelle from pushing plates of food in front of Eve every few hours. They didn’t prevent her from keeping a very annoyed but nonetheless caring and watchful eye on Eve to make sure she was eating and warm and comfortable with barely a word spoken. 

If Eve shivered, a blanket would materialize at her side moments later.

If she coughed, a cup of tea or glass of water would find its way on the table in front of her before she could reach for one on her own. 

It was simple, and it was sweet, and she could see Villanelle’s irritation at her own knee-jerk instinct to take care of Eve every time she did.

And Eve appreciated it — that much she couldn’t deny. 

Because as much as she wanted to hate Villanelle and the shitstorm her life had become since she was forced into work, tired and hungover, after Victor Kredin’s assassination, she couldn’t.

Not fully. Not truly. 

But that was just another thing that she would continue to deny for as long as possible.

And it certainly did not keep her from wanting answers. 

Like where Villanelle had been, what she had been up to, and how the hell she showed up at the right place at the right time to save Eve from probable death.

Villanelle insisted on keeping tight-lipped, but that didn’t mean that Eve wouldn’t seize her opportunity to investigate on her own when it came.

Thankfully, she didn’t need to wait long.

Villanelle had left the comfort of their hideaway earlier that afternoon to run an errand, and the lack of invitation to join suited Eve just fine.

Or at least it _ would _ have if she had been able to crack Villanelle’s computer password, though it made sense for the woman to keep her information hidden behind iron-clad security.

She was just lucky she hadn’t wiped the hard drive with all of her failed password attempts.

Eve was hunched over the island, lost in concentration when she heard metal meeting metal as a key slid into the lock on the front door. 

She sprang away from the computer, slamming the lid of the laptop in a panic and bolting to the couch. Collapsing onto the leather sofa with her heart beating wild, she tried to control her heavy nose-breathing as Villanelle ducked into the stone cottage, stomping her boots and batting the snow from her ponytailed hair.

Eve was feigning nonchalance and shooting Villanelle a tight smile as the blonde tossed her coat over a hook in the entranceway. 

“Successful outing?” Eve asked with a pitch to her voice that she reserved for when she was trying to seem interested in conversations with her ex-husband.

Villanelle stopped in the middle of the room, eyebrows raised in amusement, looking between a flushed Eve and the stool that had toppled over in her haste to get as far away from the computer as fast as possible.

“It was fine,” Villanelle drawled with sparkling, narrowed eyes. She dropped a pair of manila envelopes onto the peninsula that divided the kitchen and living spaces and stood the fallen stool upright before leaning over the counter with her arms crossed. “What did you get up to while I was gone?”

“You know,” Eve waved an airy hand toward the window. “Just — enjoying the scenery.”

“Mm,” Villanelle acknowledged with a hum. She cast a sly glance toward the laptop at her elbow before turning back to Eve with a smirk. “So you have not spent all this time trying to hack into my computer?”

“Of course not,” Eve faltered with a nervous laugh, though she knew it was for nought. 

The day they stopped being able to see right through each other would be a fatal one for them both. 

But that day, if it ever came, was too far in the future to fathom. 

“Of course not,” Villanelle mocked, swiping the device from the marble surface and strutting over to the couch. She dropped next to Eve, her left leg extended over the rustic coffee table in front of them while the other was bent at the knee, which pressed against Eve’s denim-clad thigh. 

Villanelle considered her for a moment, waiting — she assumed — for Eve to flinch away from the contact as she’d done so intentionally over the last day. But Eve didn’t react, didn’t flinch, and instead met the assassin’s surprised stare with a shrug.

Villanelle bit the inside of her lip to keep its corners from turning upward. 

When she opened her laptop to find the series of bullet points typed into the password bar, she chuckled, throwing an arm over the back of the couch and propping her head in her hand.

“Eve, I have to say, I am a bit disappointed,” she pouted, and Eve mirrored her pose, fingers sliding through her curls as she did so.

“Yeah, why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Villanelle sighed with a solemn shrug. “You _ say _that you know me so well, but then you can’t figure out something as simple as a computer password.” She placed a hand over her heart and tsked. “Maybe you do not know me as well as you think you do.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is, then?” Eve challenged, leaning forward just so, and Villanelle continued to worry her bottom lip with her teeth.

“You really can’t guess?”

“I’ve tried everything I could think of. Nothing.”

And of course, she was annoyed with herself. She was far from a computer genius like Kenny and could only attempt a series of code words and phrases she thought meant something to Villanelle.

But she'd had zero success.

Villanelle placed the MacBook in Eve’s lap with a smile and an innocent shrug. 

“You should try ‘Eve is an arsehole’.” 

Eve rolled her eyes. 

“No, please,” Villanelle gestured toward the keyboard, smirking. “Try it. Lowercase. No spaces.”

Eve’s face remained unamused when she was greeted with a black desktop background after hitting the Return key with pursed lips.

So much for iron-clad security.

Villanelle cackled.

“Oh, fuck off,” Eve scoffed, but the assassin could only throw her head back and continue to chortle with glee.

“Eve, thank you.” The blonde pretended to wipe a tear from her eye and sighed happily. “I have not laughed like that in a very long time.” 

She gave a playful poke to Eve’s shoulder, then paused, thoughtful, before watching her finger as it pressed into the fabric of Eve’s sweater a second time. She left it there for a beat, eyebrows drawn together, before dropping her hand back to her lap.

Eve cleared her throat and returned her attention to the screen.

She clicked through the few folders she could find, scrolled through the limited browser history, and found absolutely nothing of use.

When she grumbled in frustration, Villanelle leaned in, scrunching her nose.

“You know, maybe if you told me what it is you are looking for, I could help you.”

“Because you’ve been so forthcoming this entire time,” Eve threw her hands up with a sarcastic nod. 

Villanelle shrugged.

“I will tell you if it is something you need to know.”

“And this,” Eve gestured to the computer, to the room around them, “this isn’t something I need to know?”

The blonde didn’t bother to reply when she stood from the sofa. 

Eve watched as Villanelle retrieved the brown envelopes from the kitchen counter before returning to her spot on the loveseat. She closed the device in Eve’s lap and set the envelopes on top of its silver lid.

“What’s this?” 

“A gift,” Villanelle answered simply.

Eve ran a finger around the edge of the top envelope, which was considerably thinner than its bottom counterpart.

“It doesn’t look like perfume,” Eve murmured, nervous — though she couldn’t explain why.

“No,” Villanelle whispered, and her eyebrows knitted together in thought once more. She gave Eve a light — sad? — smile before agreeing softly. “Not perfume.”

Her response didn’t help the anxious flutter in Eve’s stomach.

She opened the flap of the thinner envelope and chewed her lip when she pulled a burgundy and gold passport from the brown packaging. Eve knew she didn’t need to open the second, thicker envelope to know that it was stuffed with neat stacks of crisp bills, but wasn’t thrilled to find her hypothesis had been correct.

“Did you knock over a liquor store?” 

Villanelle didn’t understand her weak joke.

“Knock over?” 

But Eve shook her head and dropped the envelopes back into Villanelle’s lap.

“No.”

They weren’t doing this. She wasn’t doing this. And she wasn’t going to let Villanelle do it, either.

“No,” she repeated. “No.”

“Eve.”

“No.”

“Eve,” Villanelle insisted, returning the envelopes to the lid of the computer on Eve's thighs. “Yes.”

“_No.” _

Villanelle frowned and crossed her arms. 

“Eve, I don’t understand you,” she exhaled in disbelief. "You get mad at me for saving your life. You get mad at me for wanting to help you. And now I’m giving you a way out of this — away from me — because it is so terrible for you to be near me — and you are mad at me again.”

Confused frustration clouded Villanelle’s hazel eyes. 

“What do you want from me?”

They were facing each other as Eve’s shoulders reached her ears, but she didn’t move from her spot on the sofa next to Villanelle. 

“I want to _understand_,” Eve responded, exasperated. “I want to stop being kept in the dark. I want to stop sitting still and feeling _ useless _and doing nothing while all of these things move around me.”

“Eve —” 

“No,” Eve’s voice was firm, but level. She wasn’t going to lose her head this time. “If you’re not working for the Twelve, then you have to be hunting them.”

She wasn’t stupid. And not being able to crack a computer password wasn’t a reason to underestimate her. She'd had enough of that.

“Okay, very good, Eve, you figured it out,” Villanelle sighed with a roll of her eyes. “What’s your point?”

“Let me help you.”

Villanelle snorted.

“Eve,” she reasoned, “be serious.”

“I _am _serious,” Eve protested, inclining her torso toward Villanelle in an attempt to be heard, understood. “I found you. I can help you find them.”

Villanelle laughed again and relaxed against the sofa, her body still turned to face Eve, eyes glittering in amusement. 

“You found me because I wanted you to find me.”

Eve matched the assassin’s stance, leaning back against the arm of the couch with her arms over her chest. 

“I found you because I’m good at my job.”

Villanelle arched an eyebrow as she chuckled in unmasked fondness. 

“Maybe.”

“Let me help,” Eve echoed. “I don’t want to sit around anymore. I want to do something. I can help.”

Villanelle remained quiet, her thumbs tapping against each other as she considered Eve and her unexpected offer.

And what Eve said had been the truth. 

She was tired of being taken advantage of, tired of being underestimated, of being stationary, of doing nothing. 

She’d spent enough of her life doing nothing.

And if the Twelve wanted to find her, she wouldn’t stand by and let them come like a cow waiting for slaughter. 

“It’s not safe.” 

Villanelle narrowed her eyes when Eve laughed. 

“Why, are you going to shoot me again?”

It wasn’t cold, though it probably could have been — should have been. But Eve was spent, and if she had to fight against everything else, she could — at least in some tiny capacity — stop fighting Villanelle. 

It wasn’t Alaska. It would never be Alaska. 

It wasn’t romantic, or wistful, though it was very likely more than delusional.

Still — what was left for her to lose?

Villanelle hummed, tongue trapped between her molars as a small smile ghosted over her face.

“Maybe. If you ask me to.”

“Don’t you mean if I ask _ for _it?”

The assassin shrugged, smirking. 

“That, too.”

As they sat staring at each other from either side of the small sofa, an oddly pleasant silence fell over them. It was, perhaps, a first in their very short, very tense history to date. 

Eve was the first to speak. 

“We’re still not Bonnie and Clyde.”

Villanelle smiled. 

“Okay.”

Then Eve crossed her arms.

“And I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“That’s fine.”

Another beat passed as Villanelle watched Eve as though she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Are you still mad at me?”

That earned her a scoff. 

“Of course I’m still mad at you.” Eve tossed the heavy, cash-filled envelope at Villanelle’s chest, and the assassin glowered at her as she clutched her left breast. “Are you still mad at me?”

“Okay, first of all, Eve, _ ow_. That was very rude,” Villanelle scolded. “Second of all, yes, of course I’m still mad at you. You are very mean to me.”

She chucked the envelope back in Eve’s direction, though with significantly less force. 

“Good.” Eve grinned for the first time since she had woken up in a hotel room in Rome with a murmured ‘good morning’ in her ear.

She rose from the sofa, stretching with her arms pulled behind her back, and cast a glance toward Villanelle. 

“What’s for dinner, then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me on Twitter @emdash_90 :)


	7. Cabernet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii, it's been a while, hasn't it?
> 
> November was a rough one but we should be back to regular programming now. I've got too much of a soft spot for these psychos to leave them hanging.
> 
> tw: there be blood

“Oh, for the bloody love of fuck.”

“I agree, it’s not ideal.”

“Not ideal?” The latter woman winced as the stress ball her colleague had been squeezing hurdled across the office. It took an innocent picture frame down with a shatter of glass and a clatter to the floor. “It’s a fucking dumpster fire.”

That might have been so — which was why she’d waited for as long as she had to relay her subordinate’s dismal news about Krassimir.

And Valentina.

And that Eve and Villanelle had slipped away without a trace.

Perhaps dumpster fire wasn’t so far off base.

Still, she remained silent.

It was best to let her superior expel her rage in a single go, though she remained prone to Tourettes-like outbursts should the mood strike.

The woman took a calming breath and rolled back in her chair to rummage through the cluttered contents of her desk drawer in search of a tub of Barnetts Mega Sour Cherries. She popped a sugar-coated candy into her mouth and grimaced, though it was impossible to tell if it was from the sour taste or their dire circumstances. 

“How is it,” she began with puckered cheeks, “that our fate rests in the hands of a defected MI6 agent and her batshit assassin girlfriend?”

“It’s our best course of action. Two birds, one stone, and all that,” the other woman said with a wave of the hand. “We have boots ready on the ground in Northumberland. Eve and Villanelle should be back in custody no later than this evening.”

“Whose custody?”

The woman smiled.

“_Ours_, of course.”

“It doesn’t change the bloody mess we’re in, no thanks to you. Villanelle has already started picking at loose threads. What if she’s on your trail?”

“We just need to stay one step ahead and make sure she keeps picking at the _right _threads,” she assured. She’d always had an exceptional talent for leading horses to water when she needed them to drink.

“And if you can’t?”

Another smile.

“The cleanup crew is only ever a phone call away.” 

**//**

“Jesus _ Christ_,” Eve shouted as she grabbed the leather-wrapped steering wheel from the passenger’s seat. 

The car came screeching back to the left side of the road with a jolt, her heart a jittery mess in the confines of her oesophagus. 

Villanelle, the vehicle’s driver, remained blissfully unbothered. Her eyes were clamped shut, hands clapped over her ears as she sang as loud as her lungs allowed to drown out the point she didn’t care to hear Eve make.

Eve might have found the entire thing endearing if it hadn’t nearly run them off the road and into a fiery death. 

She threw a light punch at Villanelle’s arm, who quit her off-key rendition of Lovefool to smirk at her passenger — this time with her hands back at ten-and-two on the wheel.

“Eve, why are you always so violent? You should really talk to someone about that. It’s very concerning.”

“Says the one who literally _ axe murdered _someone two days ago.”

Something they had in common.

And Eve didn’t know if that made her want to laugh or cry. Didn’t know if wanting to laugh should be a cause for concern. It wouldn’t be the only thing on the list if it was.

Villanelle shot her a careful glance before returning her focus to the wet concrete road in front of them, chewing her lip in thought.

“How do you feel about that?” she asked with her eyes still on the road, and Eve let out a hollow laugh.

“Do you honestly care how I feel about it?”

It was rhetorical — something she never expected Villanelle to answer, let alone answer seriously. But Villanelle shifted, uncharacteristically uncomfortable, running a tongue over her teeth as she brought a finger to scratch the tip of her nose with an indignant sniff. 

A crack in her usual unaffected demeanour that was more confusing than whether Eve remained disturbed by her witness of Valentina’s bloody demise.

What came next didn’t make things any less conflicting.

“Yes?” Villanelle hesitated. “No. I don’t know. It’s very—" she trailed off with a frown and a sigh. “I don’t know.”

But Eve had an idea.

“Confusing?” she offered with a grim smile.

Villanelle searched Eve, curiosity and surprise clear in hazel irises. 

“Yes.” Her response was cautious, reluctant, and it warmed the breath in Eve’s lungs, her hand restless in her lap, itching to reach out.

Her smile was sad, understanding.

“I know exactly how you feel.” She paused. “I think it’s normal.”

Villanelle’s mouth opened with a sharp inhale, her response lost on the tip of her tongue, dissolved by the words Eve was confident Villanelle had never been told by another person in her life.

And as the blonde faced forward, her grip tight around the steering wheel, Eve wondered what those words meant for Villanelle.

Eve wondered what they meant for herself.

Their stolen vehicle was speeding past a field of sleeping sheep when Villanelle broke the short silence, her voice lighter, her trepidation replaced with a familiar playfulness.

“Can’t you just go back to flirting with me? I like that better.”

“I don’t flirt with you.” Eve rolled her eyes, scratching away the flame in her cheeks. “When have I ever flirted with you?”

Villanelle’s gleeful cackle brought the air back into the vehicle, erasing the breathless tension that had filled the limited space between them.

“Eve, everything you _ do _is flirting with me.”

Eve pursed her lips, turning to the passing brown-green hills as they drove toward town.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

And from the reflection in the passenger’s side window, she could see Villanelle turn to her with a grin.

“It’s okay,” she promised, focus back on the road. “I like it.”

**//**

Nestled in the heart of the Northumbrian countryside, a short drive from the rural hamlet home to their safehouse, the quiet village of Rothbury was as quaint as they came.

And despite her affinity for finer, more luxurious things, Villanelle liked quaint — or at the very least, was morbidly intrigued by it. 

Nothing in her life had ever been quaint. Nothing, in 27 years, had ever even come close to resembling quaint, except, perhaps, a foolish fantasy of snowed-in cabins on a continent far away. 

Villanelle wondered what the world looked like — _ felt _like — for these small-town people and their insignificant lives. 

She wondered if the monotony made them want to rip out of their skin just as Villanelle did when forced to sit still for too long. Whether they found peace in the quiet mundanity. If they found comfort in the black and white of such a plain, _ normal _existence. 

She wondered if she could ever find a home in quaint. If a reality in which quiet and normality would be enough for her — if it even existed — and if it did, would she ever want that?

Would Eve?

Her eyes flicked to the older woman who enjoyed the rolling scenery with her elbow against the window and her head in her hand. 

Villanelle smiled through a muted sigh. 

Quaint would never be enough for someone as exceptional and hard-headed as Eve Polastri, whose rapt curiosity and exhaustion from the tediousness of her ordinary life had led her straight to Villanelle.

Normal would never be enough for Eve and her endless pacing and fidgeting and questioning. 

They would never be enough for the woman who had bossed Villanelle into taking her into town because she was “competent enough to buy a goddamn carton of eggs without getting murdered, thank you.”

It was cute when she was indignant.

Villanelle didn’t doubt Eve’s competence; she knew better than anyone just how amazing Eve could be when she let herself. But that didn’t change the violent protectiveness that burned Villanelle from the inside out since she’d watched another assassin wrap her fingers around Eve’s neck.

It didn’t change the fact that no matter how much Villanelle struggled to trust Eve, no matter how much Eve annoyed her in ways that made Villanelle’s mouth dry, her skin tingle, keeping Eve safe had become more important than — 

More important than.

But that was just another thought to add to the growing list of things that Villanelle found... _ confusing. _

She pulled the car into an empty parking space along the village’s narrow high street lined with family-owned shops and pubs. Though the holidays had since passed, wreaths and bells hung in store windows, white lights twinkling in the English oak trees that bordered the quiet street as the sun faded in the dark, January sky.

Eve and Villanelle stepped out of the cold, early evening air and into the town’s small Co-op Food. A lone cashier greeted them with an unenthusiastic raise of her eyebrows before returning her attention to her phone.

“So, what do you want me to cook tonight?” Villanelle asked, frowning at the limited butcher selection. She couldn’t wait to get back into a city with proper grocery stores and decent ingredients. 

“I can make dinner, you know.” 

Villanelle chuckled.

“Once was enough, thank you.”

“What, do you have a problem with my cooking?” Eve huffed, trailing behind her with arms crossed.

“No, Eve, your scrambled eggs were wonderful, thank you.” If not tragically overcooked. “But it is our last night here. We should celebrate with something nice.”

Villanelle didn’t want to risk staying in one place for too long when they were operating with so little intel. Isolation in the country had been fine for a few days, but they needed better resources, better exit strategies, and a better internet connection.

Eve glowered. “I can still help.”

“You can pick the wine, then. That would be very helpful.” Villanelle smirked, tickled by the way Eve bit the inside of her cheek to hide the smile that gave away her lack of annoyance. “Go on,” she shooed Eve with a wave of her hand, laughing as the woman stomped into a neighbouring aisle, muttering to herself about dicks and assholes. 

Eve was so crude. Villanelle loved it. 

She wandered toward the international staples in search of a decent curry paste, since the likelihood of finding fresh chiles and coriander in Rothbury, population 445, in the dead of winter, was bleak.

She was scanning the label of the store’s solitary brand of Thai red curry paste when she saw a shadow pass from the corner of her eye, drawing her attention to the front of the store.

Villanelle hadn’t been expecting the small shop to be bursting with customers, but the sudden hush that had fallen over the tiny establishment sent an unnerved chill down her back. It set her spine straight, her teeth on edge.

She placed the yellow shopping basket down in front of a wall of dry goods, and with one foot steady in front of the other, crept to the top of the aisle, hands tense at her sides.

The Co-op’s entrance was vacant, the checkout lanes abandoned by the missing store clerk. Villanelle cursed under her breath as a familiar adrenaline stirred in the pit of her stomach to the tips of her fingers.

Her head spun to her left at the unmistakable squelch of rubber sole against wet tile, her fists clenched as she stared down the barrel of black steel.

The man brought a leather-gloved finger to his lips before whispering, “don’t move.”

**//**

Eve grumbled her way down to the wine aisle to the market’s sad selection of reds and whites. 

She offered a polite smile to the man in the middle of the lane with hands in the pockets of beige cargo pants, his heavy black boots dripping with melting snow. 

Her options were limited. Her best bet? A £3.75 bottle of a blended cabernet sauvignon whose Chilean label promised a medium body with notes of plum and black cherry that she knew would make Villanelle wrinkle her nose in haughty disgust. She could already hear the complaints. 

Eve was half aware of the man moving in her direction with a hand behind his back when her head snapped, eyes wide, when a resounding crash came from a nearby aisle, the sounds of toppling shelves and breaking glass reverberating off the walls of the small space. 

She spun on her heel, ready to race to Villanelle’s side when the man raised a gun, and Eve’s reaction was immediate, instinctive.

With a heavy swing of her arm, the bottle shattered against the man’s weapon and sent the gun spinning across the floor through a purple puddle. 

Eve had seconds to act — if any at all.

She wrapped her fingers around the neck of a second bottle and knocked the man, as hard as she could manage, across his dark, stubbled face. He stumbled backwards with a yell, blood spraying from his nose as he toppled into a cardboard display of fancy charcuterie crackers crushed beneath his heavy frame. 

Eve made a mad dash for his abandoned Glock, her beeline cut short when he grabbed her ankle as she sped past him. Shards of broken glass sliced through the skin of her calf, her palms, as she fell to the wine-soaked floor with a wet thud.

Her heart was wild in her chest, bouncing like a rubber ball off the walls of a metal container, echoing in the drums of her ears. 

A shout came from somewhere in the middle of the store — female — _ Villanelle _— followed by another crash. Eve ignored the searing pain in her hands and leg as she struggled to her feet, desperate to find her way to the source of the racket.

Her attacker snarled, his blunt nails digging into her skin as he grasped her calf. But Eve was faster, stronger than him in his daze, and kicked out of his hold, smashing a third bottle — a £1.50 Spanish chardonnay — over the back of his head.

The man collapsed, face first, back onto the floor with a sickening thump, and Eve, priorities elsewhere, hobbled out of the aisle without a second glance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on twitter if you wanna! @emdash_90


	8. Cashmere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, as always, for sticking with this one, loves! Your comments and kudos make my day. 
> 
> On with the next one! (tw for violence and bloody stuff still applies)

Villanelle growled, struggling beneath the weight of her burly assailant.

The knife she’d holstered to her leg — _ just in case _ — was out of reach as his knees impaled her thighs, her wrists held above her head by a pair of large hands. 

Her back was slick with a violent mess of the jarred pasta sauce that shattered against the floor when he had thrown her into the grocery shelves, and Villanelle’s fury raged at the ruin of her cashmere coat. 

She’d make him pay for that.

The man extended an arm to reach for his gun that had clattered to the floor amid their wrestling match, and she seized her opportunity to wriggle a hand out of his grip. But her swinging fist went easily intercepted. 

A punch connected with her cheekbone and Villanelle’s head slapped against the floor, stars exploding behind her eyes. 

He was reaching over her once again when, through her stupor, she heard Eve’s voice break through the shrill ringing in her ears.

“Get your hands _ off _her.”

Villanelle’s head lolled to the side in time to see Eve limping into view, dragging a blood-soaked leg with a gun raised. 

He gave a harsh laugh, and Eve shook, her eyes dark and livid, hair falling around her face from her loose ponytail. 

It was beautiful. 

“Let her go,” Eve repeated, holding her weapon between both hands, stance strong despite her bleeding limb, and Villanelle glowed with pride as her vision swam. 

A split second ticked by as the man weighed his options. His glance was quick between Eve and his gun that was just far enough out of reach.

In the end, his decision to underestimate Eve Polastri was one he’d have little time to regret.

When he heaved his body over Villanelle to make a swipe for his weapon, Eve’s eyes clamped shut and her finger squeezed the trigger without a second thought.

_ Click. _

He froze. 

Eve frowned.

Villanelle laughed. 

“Eve,” she grinned, her cough wet and red. “The _ safety. _” 

But it was all the distraction Villanelle needed.

She took advantage of his confusion and tore her leg from under her captor’s hold to bring her knee to his groin. Her next move was smooth, swift — at least as much as she could manage with blurred, spinning focus — as she flipped the man onto his back and drove the knife she’d pulled from its holster between his ribs.

His scream echoed off the shelves, off the broken glass scattered across the floor. But it was a gasp from the end of the aisle that sent Villanelle’s head whipping toward Eve, who locked onto Villanelle and the man she knelt atop, stunned.

“Eve?” she rasped, the throb at her temples near unbearable. “Are you okay?” 

“Okay,” Eve gulped. Her tone was light, but Villanelle could hear the uneasy tremor in her voice as she kept her gun pointed. “Just a scrape.”

“Can you watch the door?”

Eve’s nod was vigorous, her eyes wide. 

“Stay where I can see you, okay?” The softness of Villanelle’s voice was a surprising feat given she was straddling a man with a knife in his upper abdomen.

She waited until she was out of Eve’s line of sight before patting the pockets of the man’s jacket, his pants, in search of a phone — identification — anything. If the Twelve had tracked them down, Villanelle was not about to walk out of the Co-op without information — without _something _to trace back to them. 

She pulled a phone from his coat pocket and searched his contact list, his call history. 

Nothing. It was a burner.

Villanelle cursed, and the man cried when she twisted the handle of the knife still plunged into his torso. 

“Who sent you?”

He spat in her face, and she twisted the blade once again, harder. 

“I need a name.”

“_Okay,” _the man hollered, pushing away her hands, but his strength had all but evaporated once steel met skin. “Crofton. His name is Crofton.” 

“Crofton who?”

Another twist. Another scream. 

“I don’t know. _ I don’t know.” _He was sweating, his breathing harsh, his face haunted and greying.

Villanelle blinked heavily as the room spun around her and bile rose in her throat. But she would not let something as trivial as a headache stand in her way of getting what she needed.

“Then where can I find him?” Villanelle demanded through gritted teeth, patience waning. 

She needed to get back to Eve. Needed to get her out of there.

“I don’t know,” the man sputtered, trembling. She didn’t have long. “He was supposed… Supposed to call. Said he’d give us coordinates.”

“Coordinates for what?”

“Drop off.”

“Who else is coming?”

He coughed, spraying Villanelle’s front in a light red splatter. She would have rolled her eyes if she could have mustered the energy. 

Her coat was beyond rescue.

“No one. No one else.”

“Thanks,” Villanelle smirked before she yanked the knife from his wound, no time to take him in as he spilt out onto the floor in a ruby puddle. No time to enjoy the symphony of his final, gurgling breaths. 

She had other business to handle.

Villanelle was slow to stand, breathing through the dizzying fog that clouded her every move. 

Eve took a step toward Villanelle from the top of the aisle, but Villanelle held up a hand to stop her from coming any closer.

“Where is the one who did that?” she asked with her knife pointed at Eve’s injured leg. The denim was torn in places along her calf with red, oozing skin peeking out of the split fabric, and Villanelle’s anger roiled through her wooziness.

“Out cold. Two aisles down.”

“How?”

“Oh, uh, a bottle of wine.” Eve’s cheeks reddened, and her mirthless, embarrassed chuckle warmed Villanelle’s already turning insides. 

She needed to sit down.

"I will go check on him." Villanelle scooped up the gun that lay abandoned on the floor and gave Eve a resolute nod. "And then we need to leave."

"Can't we just, you know," Eve's arms swung at her sides, "leave him?"

And even with 50 feet between them, even through blurred vision that threatened to knock her off her feet, Villanelle did not miss the apprehension in Eve's eyes, wide and alarmed.

But even if Villanelle wanted to give Eve what she was asking for — she couldn't. 

"Eve," Villanelle shook her head, "you know we can't."

Eve sighed through her disappointment. Through her resignation. 

"Right. You're right."

"I will be quick."

Villanelle fumbled her way to her target, stopping every few metres to catch her breath and steady the carousel that twirled before her.

But standing above the man who was face down in a modest pool of blood, the hair behind his ears matted and deep red, not moving, not breathing, Villanelle didn't need to check for a pulse to know she'd made the trip for nothing.

Or — almost nothing.

"Oh, Eve," she murmured, her smile conflicted.

She aimed her gun needlessly at his head and a shot rang out, deafening between the walls of the small grocery store, the pool of blood growing as fleshy matter painted the floor.

And then she was on the move again, stumbling back to Eve, gripping passing shelves to hold herself upright. The darkness that perforated the edges of her vision crept closer, her breathing ragged.

An end display of olive oil crashed to the floor when Villanelle turned out of the aisle toward the front of the shop where Eve stood, nervous and fretting.

"Eve?" Villanelle croaked as the woman swam in and out of focus. She felt herself falling forward, against her will, like a water-logged branch from a tree. 

Her stomach jerked, her eyes drooped shut. But instead of connecting with cold, hard tile in a painful thump, she fell against a warm body, a pair of arms wrapping around her shoulders to keep her from hitting the ground.

"It's okay. I've got you." 

Villanelle heard Eve's voice through her fog, her surroundings faded to black, barely aware that she was being led out of the Co-op. 

"I've got you."

**//**

Eve was panting when she collapsed into a dusty, tartan armchair in a dank lodge a few hours following their near-fatal shopping trip. 

Her auto-pilot kicked in when Villanelle had turned out of the wine aisle, stumbling and barely conscious, and Eve’s only focus was to get them out and get them safe.

She couldn’t say for sure where she’d taken them. The road signs hinted they were a couple hundred kilometres outside York, in a nondescript motel at the edge of a small town, not unlike the one they’d just fled. All that mattered was that they had escaped, unfollowed, though not unscathed.

With slurred instructions on how to hot-wire a car from Villanelle, Eve had raced them out of town in a black Mini she’d found parked under a thin sheet of snow, certain no one would miss the vehicle for at least a few hours given the evening hour. 

She leaned forward, elbows on knees, head in her palms, and expelled a tired sigh through puffed cheeks. She wiped her face with her hands, sore and caked in dried blood from her fall onto shards of glass. 

Eve had been running on fumes for hours, but every time she’d whine in pain, every time her body had slowed, she told herself to just keep going. 

Just keep going. 

She looked up to Villanelle’s still form, sprawled across a lumpy double bed in the middle of their lodge’s only room. 

She’d been in and out since they’d limped, Eve supporting Villanelle, out of the Rothbury grocery store, spending the bulk of their ride south slumped against the passenger’s side window. 

Eve had found it difficult to focus on the road ahead with her eyes darting back to the blonde every few seconds, her mind wrought with worry over a vulnerable Villanelle. 

The assassin in question groaned, stirring in the bed Eve knew she’d complain about the moment her return to form was within reach. 

Eve bit her lip at the hiccough in her chest. 

She was losing the battle she’d been waging against Villanelle since getting reacquainted in her kitchen. But did it still count as losing if she’d just about stopped fighting altogether?

“Eve?”

Villanelle’s voice cracked through the quiet, and Eve was at her side in seconds, kneeling beside the head of the bed despite the pain in her cut up limbs.

The blonde’s eyes blinked open, and they were clearer, more aware than they had been in hours. A dark, angry bruise covered her right cheek, there were cuts along her eyebrow, her jawline, and Eve’s fist tightened at her side, out of sight. 

“How are you feeling?”

Villanelle smiled sleepily and squeezed her eyes shut with a whine. 

“Mm, like there is an elephant on my head. Or Konstantin. He is very heavy.”

Eve swallowed a smirk. At least Villanelle was making jokes again. That had to mean she was feeling at least the slightest bit better.

“Let me get you some Advil,” Eve said, standing from her crouched position. 

But a warm hand closed around her wrist before she could step away. 

“No, don’t go,” Villanelle pleaded, almost bashful, and Eve smiled down at her with a raised eyebrow. “Stay.”

“I’ll be two seconds. The bottle’s on the table.” 

“Please. Just for a minute,” Villanelle pouted, still holding Eve’s forearm. 

“Okay,” Eve sighed, far from annoyed as she sat on the edge of the bed, inches from Villanelle. “Just for a minute.”

The blonde grinned, her hand in its same place on Eve’s arm, her thumb moving slowly, almost imperceptibly over Eve’s skin. 

But Eve could feel it — felt it too much. 

Exhaustion was settling over her shoulders and delirium took the wheel when Villanelle shifted, a dark blonde lock of hair falling into her eyes, and Eve, without a second thought, reached to tuck the stray hair back into place. 

Still not thinking — only doing, only moving — Eve’s finger trailed from behind Villanelle’s ear to whisper across her eyebrow, down the side of her face, neither of them blinking, neither of them breathing. 

At least until Villanelle bolted upright with a wince when her fingers grazed the broken skin on Eve’s palms. 

She clutched the side of her head, closing her eyes and exhaling a heavy breath before zeroing in on Eve once again. 

“You’re hurt.” 

“Hey, c’mon,” Eve protested with a light smile. “Lie back down. It’s nothing.”

Villanelle turned Eve’s hand in hers to trace the gashes in Eve’s palms, her jaw set, eyebrows drawn together. 

“This does not look like nothing,” she objected. “What about your leg? It was bleeding.”

And there was a glimmer of _something _in her eyes that made Eve’s stomach drop, her skin tingle. 

There was anger. 

That was certainly nothing new to Eve. 

Warmth. 

She’d seen flickers of that, too — when Villanelle didn’t think she was looking. 

But there was something else — something dangerously close to concern, to sadness, to guilt — that Eve had never seen before. 

Not in those eyes she knew so well, yet not at all. 

“I’m okay,” she promised. “I’m more worried about you.”

“Why? I am fine.”

“You’re concussed.”

Villanelle hummed a laugh that bordered on a giggle. 

“Yeah.”

“Lie back down,” Eve instructed, smiling when Villanelle grumbled with a jutted lip as Eve pushed her back down onto the mattress with her index finger to the assassin’s chest.

She moved farther onto the bed, settling against the headboard next to Villanelle, who stared up at her, quiet. 

They couldn’t stay for long. 

Long enough for Villanelle to get her strength back. Long enough for them to map out their next — hopefully less precarious — move. 

But before all of that, they needed rest. 

“Eve?” Villanelle spoke after a few minutes of silence. 

“Hm?”

“I can’t believe you left the safety on the gun.”

Neither could she. 

“No one asked for your opinion.”

Villanelle’s wicked grin earned her an eye roll from Eve, who struggled to contain her own smile. 

“Eve?” Villanelle spoke again, hazel eyes doused with those same glimmers from moments before. 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Her voice was just above a whisper, and Eve — Eve didn’t know what to say. 

“Oh. What — what for?”

Villanelle shrugged. 

“For getting us out.” A beat. “For being here.”

Eve smiled to herself and sighed in the dim light of the room, before a laugh erupted from behind her lips. 

“You know,” she began with a hand running through her hair, “I don’t think I could be anywhere else.”


End file.
